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THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE 



LECTURES 



ON THE 



HISTORY OF LITERATURE 



DELIVERED BY 

THOMAS CARLYLE 

April to July 1838 



NOW PRINTED FOR THE FIRST TIME 



EDITED, WITH PREFACE AND NOTES, BY 

PROFESSOR J. REAY GREENE 



\rciyx l 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1892 



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^ ,0 



Copyright, 1892, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



* 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



PREFACE 

The Lectures on Literature by Thomas Car- 
lyle, published for the first time in the present 
volume, were delivered at 17 Edward Street, 
Portman Square, London, during- the second 
quarter of the year 1838. Full reports of the 
twelve lectures, excepting the ninth, were taken 
by the late Mr. Thomas Chisholm Anstey, bar- 
rister-at-law and subsequently member of Par- 
liament for Youghal. Mr. Anstey must have 
possessed considerable skill for the perform- 
ance of his task. The reader will soon see for 
himself how unmistakably many characteristics 
of Carlyle's style are here rendered. 

Mr. Anstey had copies of these reports made 
by a few friends. Three such copies are known 
to exist. One, the property of the publishers, 
has been compared with a second copy kindly 
placed at their disposal by Professor Dowden, 
who has already noted samples of its contents 
in the opening- pages of his interesting: volume 
entitled Transcripts and S/>'<h'<'*. The two 



VI PREFACE 

MSS., although the work of different hands, 
give concordant renderings throughout. The 
original MS. in Mr. Anstey's handwriting is 
now the property of the Asiatic Society, Bom- 
bay, who acquired it at his death. 

To each lecture its date is here prefixed. As 
few changes as possible have been made in the 
way of correction. Slips concerning state- 
ments capable of verification and obviously due 
to momentary lapses of attention on the x>art of 
the reporter have in various cases been rec- 
tified. It must be remembered that Carlyle 
appears in our pages not as a writer but as a 
speaker. So, in estimating some doubtful locu- 
tions, it seemed best to follow the safe guide of 
analogy offered by the author's well-known 
Lectures on Heroes and Hero "Worship, deliv- 
ered in the same place, only two years later 
than the present course. 

Why did not Carlyle issue these Lectures on 
Literature in his life-time ? Doubtless he 
shrank from the slow labor of preparing for 
publication discourses which deal with topics 
demanding careful treatment while almost 
infinite in their extent and diversity. A 
prophet announcing high truths, he may not 
have felt himself so well fitted to do the work 



PREFACE Vll 

of a commentator. Fond as he was of needful 
repetitions, of variations on the same theme, 
after the manner of most impressive preachers 
and of some musicians, he had not the expan- 
sive suavity of exposition which is so charming- 
in Malebranche. It may well have seemed to 
him an irksome business to spoil perhaps his 
own sentences, so effective when spoken, to 
weaken their force by critical interpolations. 
His natural impatience, his glowing produc- 
tivity, urged him to other work. For in 1838 
the genius of Carlyle may be said to have 
reached its highest and most fervid epoch. 

Carlyle's French Revolution, acknowledged to 
be one of the best and most individual of his 
books, is not so much a history of that great 
chain of events as an apt selection of striking- 
episodes, together with a running comment on 
other histories and on the lessons which revo- 
lutions should teach. The same may be said 
of the lectures before us. They do not consti- 
tute a manual. They are the more welcome on 
this account, for manuals of literature abound. 
They cannot rightly be blamed because of their 
omissions. They treat less of literature than of 
the causes of literature, its course and its sig- 
nificance. 



Vlll PREFACE 

We waive the opportunity here afforded us 
of adding one more to the multitude of essays 
on Carlyle as himself a power in literature. 
The reader perhaps will thank us. Carlyle was 
wont to say that in some golden age publishers 
and the public would see the wisdom of paying 
authors for what they do not write. 

During the weeks that followed Carlyle's 
death and the appearance of the valuable bi- 
ography by Mr. Froude the press teemed with 
notices passing judgment on our author and 
all things concerning him. Who now studies 
these notices % Have they any permanent value 1 
Are they not like the aesthetic criticisms on 
Shakespeare, so little relished by the most de- 
voted * of English Shakespeare-students ? The 
good sense of many will turn from reviews of 
Carlyle to Carlyle himself. He tells us in his 
first paragraph (page 2) that authors unlike 
heroes need no illumination from without ; they 
are self-luminous. Carlyle's own brightness 
now makes him shine as a fixed star in our lit- 
erary firmament. His radiance may be ob- 
scured; quenched it cannot be. His faults and 
foibles are manifest, yet is he esteemed in spite 

* The late Mr. Halliwell Phillips. See his Memoranda on 
the Tragedy of Hamlet, London, 1879. 



PREFACE IX 

of tlieni, and by too many because of them. 
His prejudices are vexatious, at least occasion- 
ally. So are those of De Quincey, at his best 
the best English prose-writer of this century. 
Amid all Carlyle's prejudices, amid all his de- 
nunciations of men and things to be condemned, 
we see him capable of hope ; we feel he sym- 
pathizes with his fellow-creatures. Beneath a 
mask of ferocity love beams from his counte- 
nance. Like Tasso's heroic prince — 

Se'l miri fulminar fra Varme auvolto. 
Marte lo stimi ; Amor se scopre il volto. 

No healthy man can doubt Carlyle's sincerity. 
We ought surely to greet with pleasure every 
combination of sincerity, ability, and amiability. 
We courteously, therefore, invite the reader to 
enjoy the rich literary treat here set before him. 

Our thanks are due to Professor Dowclen for 
his kindness in placing his transcript of these 
Lectures at our disposal, and also to Mr. S. H. 
Hodivala of Bombay for information he has 
afforded us with respect to Mr. Anstey's orig- 
inal manuscript. 

J. Eeay Greene. 

Manor Lodge, 
Tooting Graveney, London, S. W. 

December, 1891. 



CONTENTS 



FIRST PERIOD. 

LECTURE PAGE 

I. — OF LITERATURE IN GENERAL LANGUAGE, TRADI- 
TION, RELIGIONS, RACES THE GREEKS \ THEIR 

CHARACTER IN HISTORY, THEIR FORTUNE, PER- 
FORMANCE — MYTHOLOGIES ORIGIN OF GODS . 1 

II. HOMER : THE HEROIC AGES FROM ^SCHYLUS 

TO SOCRATES — DECLINE OF THE GREEKS . .16 

III. THE ROMANS '. THEIR CHARACTER, THEIR FOR- 
TUNE, WHAT THEY DID — FROM VIRGIL TO TAC- 
ITUS END OF PAGANISM . . . .37 



SECOND PERIOD. 

TV. MIDDLE AGES— CHRISTIANITY J FAITH INVEN- 
TIONS PIOUS FOUNDATIONS POPE HILDE- 

BRAND CRUSADES — TBOUBADOU US — NIEBEU I N - 

GEN LIED ....... 61 



Xll CONTENTS 



V. DANTE — THE ITALIANS — CATHOLICISM — PURGA- 
TORY 83 

VI. — THE SPANIARDS CHIVALRY GREATNESS OF 

THE SPANISH NATION CERVANTES, HIS LIFE, 

HIS BOOK —LOPE — CALDERON — PROTESTANTISM 
AND THE DUTCH WAR 102 

VII. — THE GERMANS WHAT THEY HAVE DONE — REF- 
ORMATION — LUTHER — ULRICH VON HUTTEN — 
ERASMUS 124 

Vin. THE ENGLISH '. THEIR ORIGIN, THEIR WORK 

AND DESTINY ELIZABETHAN ERA SHAKE- 
SPEARE — JOHN KNOX — MILTON BEGINNING OF 

SCEPTICISM ....... 146 



THIRD PERIOD. 

IX. VOLTAIRE THE FRENCH SCEPTICISM FROM 

RABELAIS TO ROUSSEAU. 

[Of this Lecture no record exists.] 

X. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IN ENGLAND WHIT- 
FIELD — SWIFT — STERNE — JOHNSON — HUME . 169 

XL — CONSUMMATION OF SCEPTICISM WERTHERISM 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION . . . .186 



CONTENTS Xlll 

FOURTH PERIOD. 

LECTURE PAGE 

XII. OF MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE GOETHE AND 

HIS WORKS 206 



NOTES 227 



LECTURES 

ON 

THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE 



LECTURE I. 

April 21th 



FIEST PEEIOD 

Of Literature in General— Language, Tradition, 
Religions, Races — The Greeks : Their Character 
in History, Their Fortune, Performance — My- 
thologies—Origin of Gods. 

It must surely be an interesting occupation to fol- 
low the stream of mind from the periods at which 
the first great spirits of our western world wrote 
and flourished, down to these times. He who would 
pursue the investigation, however, must commence 
by inquiring what it was these men thought before 
he inquires what they did ; for, after all, these were 
solely remarkable for mind, thought, opinion — opin- 
ion which clothed itself in action, and their opinions 
have survived in their books. A book affords mat- 
ter for deep meditation. Upon their shelves books 



2 LITERATURE IN GENERAL 

seem queer, insignificant tilings, but in reality there 
is nothing so important as a book is. It stirs up 
the minds of men long after the author has sunk 
into the grave, and continues to exert its corre- 
sponding influence for ages. Authors unlike he- 
roes, therefore, do not need to be illuminated by 
others ; they are of themselves luminous. The 
thought that was produced to-day, the pamphlet 
that was published to-day, are only, as it were, re- 
prints of thoughts that have circulated ever since 
the world began. And we are interested in its his- 
tory, for the thought is alive with us, and it lives 
when we are dead. 

There is a very great difficulty in reducing this 
generation of thought to a perfect theory, as indeed 
there is with everything else, except, perhaps, the 
stars only, and even they are not reduced to theory ; 
not perfectly, at least, for, although the solar sys- 
tem is quite established as such, it seems doubtful 
whether it does not in its turn revolve round other 
solar systems, and so any theory is, in fact, only 
imperfect. This phenomenon, therefore, is not to 
be theorized on ; something, however, is necessary 
to be done in order to familiarize ourselves with it. 
We shall see this great stream of thought, bearing 
with it its strange phenomenon of literary produc- 
tions, divide itself into regular periods ; and we will 
commence with the facts to be discovered in the 
history of the Greeks. 



ORIGIN OF THE GREEKS 3 

The Greek records go as far back as 1,800 years 
before our era, that is, 3,600 years or so from the 
present time. But they cannot be considered as 
authentic at that antiquity. When we ask the ques- 
tion, Who were the first inhabitants of Greece? 
or, Were they the same as that modern nation by 
some called Grseci, by others, Hellenes, and by us, 
Greeks ? we can derive no clear account from any 
source. They seem to have been called Pelasgi. 
There is a controversy whether these Hellenes were 
Pelasgi, or new settlers from the East. They were 
probably Pelasgi, with whom thought had begun to 
operate a progress in science and civilization ; and 
these gave their local name Hellenes to the rest, 
just as was the case with the Angles and the Sax- 
ons. We have no good history of Greece. This is 
not at all remarkable. Greek transactions had never 
anything alive ; no result for us ; they were dead 
entirety. The only points which serve to guide us 
are a few ruined towns, a few masses of stone, and 
some broken statuary. In this point of view we 
can trace three epochs, not more, after the introduc- 
tion of civilized arts into the country, and the for- 
mation of societies. 

1. The first is the siege of Troy, which happened 
in the twelfth century, b.c, and was instituted by 
the Achaioi, as they were then called, or Hellenes. 
It seems that there is evidence that they were at 
that time the same as Pelasgi. The siege, as is well 



4 HOMERIC PERIOD 

known, is said to have been occasioned by Paris 
carrying off a Greek girl, the famous Helen, wife of 
Menelaus. Herodotus speaks of many such cases — 
Io, for example, and Europa. He remarks very 
properly that it is really very foolish to go to war 
for such a reason, as the lady is always sure to be as 
much to blame herself as her seducer. Whatever, 
however, was the reason, this was the first confed- 
erate act of the Hellenes in their capacity of an 
European people. The town was taken and de- 
stroyed. The immediate cause which was assigned 
may not have been true ; but, by the European Pe- 
lasgi, it seems to have been chiefly ascribed to their 
superiority over Asia ; this was the constant gesta of 
the narrative. The event is also important in giving 
rise to the first valuable work of antiquity after the 
Bible, the Homeric Poems, comprising the Iliad and 
the Odyssey. 

Of the date of 600 years later we have the marble 
chronicles now preserved in the University of Ox- 
ford, which an Earl of Arundel brought out of 
the East in the reign of James I, and which ar- 
rived here about the year 1627. They suffered 
much during the civil wars, and lay mutilated a 
long time in the garden of Arundel House at 
Lambeth. One of them even was built up by the 
gardener into the garden wall. Among the most 
remarkable was the marble called the Chronicle of 
Paros, containing a record of some very memorable 



PERSIAN INVASION 5 

events. It is uncertain why it was so called. Near 
the spot where it was found a new colony was found- 
ed 264 b.c, and, as it was the custom to erect these 
records on such occasions, it is presumed that the 
above was the date of its erection. Herodotus lived 
in the fifth century b.c, but it was clean after that. 

2. The second epoch was that of the Persian in- 
vasion. Greece had then to support itself against 
the innumerable hosts of the East poured out 
against her. This is the great gesta of Herodotus' 
history : the gallant resistance of a handful of 
Greeks, for they were far from being unanimous. 
Their fate trembled in the iron scale of destiny for 
a while. At Thermopylae Leonidas repelled the 
Persians during three days ; on the fourth, circum- 
vented by treachery, he was overwhelmed with 
numbers, and he and his troops were cut to pieces ; 
not a man survived, they wouldn't give up the place. 
One fancies that that monument must have had a 
wonderful effect for ages after ; the marble lion with 
the inscription, " O stranger ! tell the Lacedaemo- 
nians that we lie here according to the laws." They 
were ordered to remain, not to quit the post, and 
there they lay forever. But Europe was ever after- 
ward superior to Persia. The Grecian societies soon 
afterward divided more and more until they became 
a kind of federal republic, united only by common 
habits, and mainly by their religion. It is a pity 
that during this time we have but little information 



6 GREEK COLONIZATION 

as to the influence produced upon them by the 
aspect of their beautiful country, its lofty mountains 
and fertile valleys, the gigantic trees which clothed 
the summits and sides of their craggy precipices, 
and all too beautifully set off by the bright sky 
which was shining upon them ; as well as the means 
by which all this was rendered serviceable to them 
in the ways of daily life. It is only battles that are 
marked by historians, but subjects like these are 
rarely noticed. 

They spread themselves abroad in new colonies at 
this time, but there were already Greek colonies 
even before that. They had built towns and cities, 
which still exist on the south coast of Italy, or 
Magna Grsecia as it is generally called. Indeed, I 
am told that the people in the mountains still speak 
a kind of Greek up in the Abruzzi. They built 
Marseilles in France before the Persian invasion. 
Herodotus records the Phocean emigration. They 
wandered a long time before they could find a con- 
venient spot for their new settlement ; but, to ex- 
tinguish all hope of return, their leader took a red- 
hot ball of iron and plunged it into the sea, and 
called the gods to witness that he and his followers 
would never return to Phocea until that ball of iron 
should float upon the surface. They afterward 
landed at Marseilles, and founded a flourishing re- 
public there. 

3. The third great epoch, like the other two, has 



MACEDONIAN PEKIOD 7 

also reference to the East. It was the flower time 
of Greece — her history is as that of a tree from its 
sapling state to its decline ; and at this period she 
developed an efflorescence of genius such as no 
other country ever beheld, but it speedily ended in 
the shedding of her flowers and in her own decay. 
From that time she has continued to fall, and 
Greece has never again been such as she then was. 
About the year 330 b.c. she was subjected to the 
king of a foreign state, Macedon. Alexander the 
Great found little trouble in ruling Greece, en- 
feebled already by the Peloponnesian war, a war of 
which one cannot see the reason, except that each 
contending party seems to have striven merely for its 
own gain, while their country stood by to see which 
side of the collision was to grind it down. Philip of 
Macedon, a strong, active man, had already got it 
united under him. Under Alexander occurred the 
memorable invasion of Persia, when Greece ex- 
ploded itself on Asia. He carried his arms to the 
banks of the Indus, founded kingdoms, and left 
them to his followers ; insomuch that they con- 
tinued a remarkable set of people till long after- 
ward. Nor was it till 1453 a.d. that they were 
finally conquered in Constantinople. 

This, then, is the history of Greece. The siege of 
Troy, the first epoch, took place in the year 1184 
b.c. The Battle of Marathon, 490 b.c ; and 160 
years later came the invasion of Persia. Europe was 



8 LIKENESS OF GREEKS TO FRENCH 

henceforth to develop herself on an independent 
footing, and it had been so ordered that Greece was 
to begin that. As to their peculiar physiognomy 
among nations, they were in one respect an ex- 
tremely interesting people ; but, in another, un- 
amiable and weak entirely. It has been somewhere 
remarked by persons learned in the speculation on 
what is called the doctrine of races, that the Pelasgi 
were of Celtic descent. However this may be, it is 
certain that there is a remarkable similarity in char- 
acter of the French to these Greeks. Their first 
feature was what we may call the central feature of 
all others existing, vehemence, not exactly strength, 
for there was no permanent coherence in it as in 
strength, but a sort of fiery impetuosity, a vehe- 
mence never anywhere so remarkable as among the 
Greeks, except among the French. And there are 
instances of this both in its good and bad point of 
view. As to the bad, there is the instance men- 
tioned by Thucydides of the sedition in Corcyra, 
which really does read like a chapter out of the 
French Revolution, in which the actors seem to be 
quite regardless of any moment but that which was 
at hand. Here, too, the lower classes were at war 
upon the higher or aristocrats, as the French would 
have called them. They suspected a design on the 
part of the aristocracy to carry them as slaves off to 
Athens, and on their side it ended in the aristocracy 
being all shut up in prison ; man after man they 



GREEK GENIUS 9 

were brought out of the prison, and then with stabs 
and pikes they were massacred one after another 
(this is all told by Thucydides) until those within 
the prison, finding what was going on, would not 
come out when summoned, whereupon the mob 
fired arrows upon them until they were all de- 
stroyed. In short, the whole scene recalls to the 
reader the events of September 1792. 

Another instance, but more justifiable, was the 
following : — When Xerxes first invaded Greece, an 
Athenian, Lycidas, proposed to the citizens to sur- 
render the city, as it was impossible to make head 
against the Persians. The Athenians assembled, 
jostled, struck, and trampled upon him till he died. 
The women of the place, hearing this, went to his 
house, attacked his wife and children, and stabbed 
them to death. There was nothing ever like this 
behavior or that at Corcyra known in other coun- 
tries in ancient times ; as among the Komans, 
for example, during their dominant period. 

But connected with all this savageness there was 
an extraordinary delicacy of taste and genius in 
them. They had a prompt dexterity in seizing the 
true relations of objects, a beautiful and quick sense 
in perceiving the places in which the things lay all 
round the world which they had to work with, and 
which, without being entirely admirable, was in their 
own internal province highly useful. So the French, 
with their undeniable barrenness of genius, have yet 



10 SPIRIT OF HARMONY 

in a remarkable maDner the faculty of expressing 
themselves with precision and elegance to so singu- 
lar a degree that no ideas or inventions can possibly 
become popularized till they are presented to the 
world by means of the French language. 

And this is true of history, and of all things now 
in the world, of all philosophy, and of everything 
else ; but in poetry, philosophy, and all things, the 
Greek genius displays itself with as curious a felicity 
as the French does in frivolous exercises. Singing 
or music was the central principle of the Greeks, 
not a subordinate one, and they were right. What 
is not musical is rough and hard, and cannot be 
harmonized. Harmony is the essence of art and 
science. The mind moulds to itself the clay, and 
makes it what it will. The Pelasgic architecture, 
which still subsists in its huge walls of stone, 
formed of immense bowlders piled one upon another, 
presents, I am told, now at the distance of 3,000 
years the evidence of most magnificent symmetry 
and an eye to what is beautiful. Their poems 
are equally admirable. Their statuary comprises 
still the highest things that we have to show for 
ourselves in that art. Phidias, for example, had 
the same spirit of harmony, and the matter of his 
art was obedient to him. His Jupiter of Elis must 
have been a memorable work, it seems to me. Phi- 
dias superintended the building of that thing, the 
Parthenon, and, perhaps, the Elgin marbles received 



PHIDIAS 11 

his corrections. When he projected, however, his 
Jupiter of Elis his ideas were so confused and 
bewildered as to give him great unrest, and he 
wandered about perplexed that the shape he wished 
would not disclose itself. But one night, after 
struggling in pain with his thoughts as usual, and 
meditating on his design, in a dream he saw a group 
of Grecian maidens approach with pails of water on 
their heads, who began a song in praise of Jupiter. 
At that moment the sun of poetry stared upon him 
and set free the image which he sought for, and it 
crystallized as it were out of his mind into marble, 
and became as symmetry itself. This spirit of har- 
mony operated directly in him, informing all parts of 
his mind, thence transferring itself into statuary, and 
seen with the eye and filling the hearts of all people. 

I shall now call your attention to the opinions 
entertained by the Greeks on all things that con- 
cerned this world, or what we call their religion. 
Polytheism seems at first sight an inextricable mass 
of confusions and delusions ; but there was, no 
doubt, some meaning in it for the people. It may 
be explained in one of two ways. The first is, that 
the fable was only an allegory to explain the various 
relations of natural facts (of spiritual facts and 
material), and much learning has been expended on 
this theory. Bacon himself wrote upon it in his 
treatise " De Sapientia Veterum." 

But I think there is little or nothing to be made 



12 MYTHOLOGY 

out of that. To tell fabulous stories of that kind 
does not seem a natural process in the diffusion of 
science. No man in such a case would have sat 
down to make out something which all the while he 
knew to be a lie ; no serious man would do it. The 
second opinion is, that their gods were simply their 
kings and heroes, whom they afterward deified. 
There is more probability in this theory, which is 
called Euhemerism. Man is always venerable 
to man; great men are sure to attract worship 
or reverence in all ages, and in ancient times 
it is not wonderful that sometimes they were 
accounted as gods ; for the most imaginative 
of us can scarcely conceive the feelings with 
which the earliest of the human species looked 
abroad on the world around them. At first, doubt- 
less, they regarded nothing but the gratification of 
their wants, as, in fact, wild people do yet ; but the 
man would soon begin to ask himself whence he 
was, what were his flesh and blood, what he himself 
was, who was not here a short time ago, who will 
not be here much longer, but still existing a con- 
scious individual in this immense universe. The 
theories so formed would be extremely extravagant, 
and little would suffice to shape the system into 
Polytheism ; for it is really, in my opinion, a blas- 
phemy against human nature to attribute the whole 
of the system to quackery and falsehood. 

Divination, for instance, was the great nucleus 



DIVINATION 13 

round which Polytheism formed itself — the consti- 
tuted core of the whole matter. All people, pri- 
vate men as well as states, used to consult the oracle 
of Dodona or Delphi (which eventually became the 
most celebrated of all) on all the concerns of life. 
Modern travellers have discovered in those places 
pipes and other secret contrivances, from which 
they have concluded that these oracles were con- 
stituted on a principle of falsehood and delusion. 
Cicero, too, said that he was certain two augurs 
could not meet without laughing, and he was likely 
to know, for he had once been an augur himself. 
But I confess that on reading Herodotus there ap- 
pears to me to have been very little quackery about 
it. I can quite readily fancy that there was a great 
deal of reason in the oracle. The seat of that at 
Dodona was a deep, dark chasm, into which the 
diviner entered when he sought the Deity. If he 
was a man of devout frame of mind he must surely 
have then been in the best state of feeling for fore- 
seeing the future, and giving advice to others. No 
matter how this was carried on, by divination or 
otherwise, so long as the individual suffered him- 
self to be wrapt in union with a higher being. I 
like to believe better of Greece than that she 
was completely at the mercy of fraud and falsehood 
in these matters. So before the Battle of Marathon, 
an Athenian, Philippides, set off to Lacedoemon for 
supplies ; he ran nearly the whole way. As he was 



14 DESTINY 

travelling among the mountains near Tegea he heard 
the God Pan calling out to him, " Philippides, why 
do the Athenians neglect me?" He obtained the 
succors demanded, and returned to Athens to find 
his citizens victorious, and on his relating the above 
circumstance a temple was erected to Pan, and his 
worship attended to. Now, when I consider the 
frame of mind he must have been in, I have no 
doubt that he really heard in his own mind that 
voice of the God of Nature upon the wild mountain- 
side, and that this was not done by quackery or 
falsehood at all. To this system there was a deeper 
basis than the mere plan of gods and goddesses, 
such as Jupiter, Apollo, Minerva, etc. Subordinate 
functions only were assigned them. But, inde- 
pendently of their idolatry, they discovered that 
truth, which is in every man's heart, and to which 
no thinking man can refuse his assent. They 
recognized a destinj 7 , a great dumb black power, 
ruling during time, which knew nobody for its 
master, and in its decrees was as inflexible as 
adamant, and everyone knew that it was there. 
It was sometimes called Motpa, or "allotment," 
" part," and sometimes " the Unchangeable." Their 
gods were not always mentioned with reverence. 
There is a strange document on the point, the 
Prometheus of iEschylus. iEschylus wrote three 
plays of Prometheus, but only one has survived to 
our times. Prometheus had introduced fire into the 



PROMETHEUS 15 

world, and he was punished for that. His design 
was to make our race a little less wretched than it 
was. Personally he seems to be a taciturn sort of 
man, but what he does speak seems like a thunder- 
bolt against Jupiter. These miserable men were 
wandering about in ignorance of the arts of life, and 
he taught them to them. It was right in him to do 
it ! Jupiter may launch his thunderbolts, and do 
what he will with him. A time is coming ; he 
awaits his time ! Jupiter can hurl him to Tartarus, 
his time is coming too ; he must come down ; it is 
all written in the book of Destiny. 

This curious document really indicates the pri- 
meval qualities of man. So Herodotus, who was a 
clear-headed, candid man, tells us that a Scythian 
nation, the Geta3, when it thundered, or the sky was 
long clouded, used to shoot arrows in the air against 
the god, and defied him, and were excessively an- 
gry with him. Another people, whom he mentions 
with less credibility, made war on the south wind ; 
probably it had blown on them till it made them 
quite desperate. They marched against it into the 
desert, but were never heard of again. These are 
things alien to our ways of thinking, but they may 
serve to illustrate Greek life. 

I must here conclude my remarks on the charac- 
ter of the Greeks. In my next lecture I shall take 
a survey of the history of their literature from Ho- 
mer down to Socrates. 



LECTUEE IL 

May 4dh 

FIEST PERIOD— Continued 

Homer: The Heroic Ages— From ^Sschylus to So- 
crates — Decline of the Greeks. 

We must now take a survey of Greek literature, 
although our time does not afford us much scope for 
diverging, as we must do, over a space of more than 
five hundred years. 

The first works which we shall notice are the po- 
ems of Homer. These treat of that event which, as 
I mentioned in my last lecture, constitutes the first 
great epoch of Grecian History, the Siege of Troy. 
The Iliad, or Song of Ilion, consists of a series of 
what I call ballad delineations of the various occur- 
rences which took place then, rather than of a nar- 
rative of the event itself ; for it begins in the mid- 
dle of it, and, I might say, ends in the middle of it. 
The Odyssey relates the adventures and voyages of 
Odysseus or Ulysses on his return from Troy. Their 
age, as indicated by the Arundel Marbles, and still 
more by Herodotus, was 800 years B.C. At all 



HOMER 17 

events, that was the age of the Iliad, or perhaps 
900. Johannes von Miiller says of them that they 
are the oldest books of importance after the Bible. 
There are none older even among the Chinese, for, 
in spite of what has been said about their works, 
there is no evidence that any of them are any 
older than the poems of Homer. Some there are 
about the same age, but very insignificant, such 
as romances or chronicles. Who this Homer was, 
or who was the real author of these poems, is al- 
most unknown to us. There is, indeed, a bust of 
Homer in the museum presented by the Earl of 
Arundel, and there are one or two other busts of 
him elsewhere ; but we have not the slightest evi- 
dence for believing that either of them is a por- 
trait. It is not certain whether his poems were the 
work of one or many writers. There is a tradition, 
indeed, of a singer, 'O/z^pos, a beggar and blind 
man, to whom they have been attributed ; and the 
belief in his identity was common till 1780, when in 
Germany, Wolff, who had been employed to write 
a Prolegomena of a Glasgow edition of Homer, for 
the first time started an opinion which has much 
startled and confused the learned, that there was 
no such man as Homer, and that the Iliad had 
occupied a century or more in its composition, and 
that it was the work of various itinerant singers 
or poets who came to seek a welcome in the courts 
of different Grecian princes ; for there were at 
2 



18 THE HOMERIC CONTROVERSY 

that time thousands of songs about Troy circulated 
throughout Greece. It was 300 years after their 
date -when the first edition of Homer's poems was 
published by the sons of Pisistratus, Hippias and 
Hipparchus. This was the first. Lycurgus, in- 
deed, is said by Plutarch to have already made a 
collection of them ; but what he says is extremely 
vague and unsupported. The next edition was col- 
lected by Alexander the Great, which, with some al- 
terations, is our present edition. There appears to 
me to be a great improbability that any one would 
compose an epic except in writing. Other poems 
were intended for recital, but this was too long to be 
repeated in one sitting ; and, on the other hand, they 
would not have been written if, as was the case, there 
were then no readers. It is also an established fact 
that Homer could not write. He talks himself of 
messages passing from one chief to another, when it 
is clear from his own expressions that they made use, 
not of letters at all, but of some kind of hiero- 
glyphics. Indeed, the only argument in favor of 
Homer being the real author is derived from the 
common opinion on the point and from the unity of 
the poem, of which it was once said that it was as 
unlikely that it should be owing to an accidental 
concurrence of distinct writers as that, by an acci- 
dental arrangement of the types, it should have 
printed itself. But I began myself some time ago 
to read the Iliad, which I had not looked at since 



LACK OF UNITY IN" THE ILIAD 19 

I left school, and I must confess that from reading 
alone I became completely convinced that it was 
not the work of one man. Knight himself, one of 
the warmest adherents of the other side, conceded 
that the Odyssey was written by a different hand, 
and that the Iliad, as we have it, has been much 
altered by transcribers. In short, he is not at all 
strong for his own side. But by far the strongest 
consideration for the opinion is produced by read- 
ing the poem itself. As to its unity, I confess that 
it seems to me that one may cut out two or three 
books without making any alteration in its unity. 
Its value does not consist in an excellent sustaining 
of characters. There is not at all the sort of style 
in which Shakespeare draws his characters ; there 
is simply the cunning man ; the great-headed, 
coarse, stupid man ; the proud man ; but there is 
nothing so remarkable but that any one else could 
have drawn the same characters for the purpose of 
piecing them into the Iliad. We all know the old 
Italian comedy : their Harlequin, Doctor, and Col- 
umbine. There are almost similar things in the 
characters in the Iliad. Hence, if we may compare 
great things with small, we have an analogous case 
in this country's literature. "We have collections of 
songs about Kobin Hood, a character who lived as 
an outlaw in Sherwood Forest, and was particularly 
famous in Nottinghamshire and the north of Eng- 
land. In the fourteenth century innumerable bal- 



20 



lads respecting him were current in tbis country, 
and especially in the north, about his disputes with 
sheriffs, and great quantities of adventures of all 
sorts, which were sung, quite in an independent 
character, by fiddlers and old blind men. It is only 
fifty years since a bookseller of York published 
those ballads in an uniform collection ; cut out parts 
here and put in other parts there, and rendered the 
whole to as consistent a poem as the Iliad. Now, 
contrasting the melodious Greek mind with the 
not very melodious English mind, the cithara with 
the fiddle (between which, by the way, there is 
strong resemblance), and having in remembrance 
that those of the one class were sung in alehouses, 
while the others were sung in kings' houses, it 
really appears that Robin Hood ballads have re- 
ceived the very same arrangement as that which in 
other times produced " the Tale of Troy divine." 

With Johannes von Miiller, I should say that the 
character of Homer's poems is the best among all 
poems. For, in the first place, they are the delinea- 
tion of something more ancient than themselves and 
more simple, and therefore more interesting as be- 
ing the impressions of a primeval mind, the pro- 
ceedings of a set of men our spiritual progenitors. 
The first things of importance in the world's history 
are mentioned there. Secondly, they possess quali- 
ties of the highest character of whatever age or 
country. The Greek genius never exceeded what 



homer's belief in his story 21 

was clone by the authors of those poems which are 
known as the writings of Homer. Those qualities 
may be reduced to these two heads : 

First. Homer does not seem to believe his story 
to be a fiction ; he has no doubt of its truth. Now, 
if we only consider what a thing it is to believe, we 
shall see that it must have been an immense circum- 
stance in favor of Homer. I do not mean to say 
that Homer could have sworn to the truth of his 
poems before a jury — far from it ; but that he re- 
peated what had survived in tradition and records, 
and expected his readers to believe them as he did. 
With regard to that thing which we call machinery, 
such as gods, visions, and the like, I must recall to 
your minds what I said in my last lecture respect- 
ing the belief which the Greeks had in their deities. 
It is of no moment to our question that these stories 
were altogether false, but Homer believed them to be 
true. Throughout the whole of Grecian history we 
find that any remarkable man, any man to whom 
anything mysterious attached, was regarded as of 
the supernatural. Their experience was narrow, 
and men's hearts opened to the marvellous, not be- 
ing yet shut up by scepticism. This disposition 
was favorable to the plastic nature of Rumor, and 
Rumor, in fact, became afterwards one of the gods, 
and temples were raised to it. Thus Pindar men- 
tions that Iloo-ctSaJi/ (Neptune) appeared on one occa- 
sion at the Nemoeau games. Here it is conceivable 



22 RHYTHM OF THE ILIAD 

that if some aged individual of venerable mien and 
few words had, in fact, come thither, his appearance 
would have attracted attention ; people would have 
come to gaze upon him, and conjecture would have 
been busy. It would be natural that a succeeding 
generation should actually report that a god ap- 
peared upon the earth. Therefore I am convinced 
that Homer believed his narratives to be strictly true. 
Secondly. The poem of the Iliad was actually in- 
tended to be sung. It sings itself ; not only the 
cadence, but the whole thought of the poem sings 
itself, as it were : there is a serious recitative in the 
whole matter. Now, if we take these two things 
and add them together, the combination makes up 
the essence of the best poem that can be written. 
In that pitch of enthusiasm in which the whole was 
conceived the very words sing. In the strong high 
emotion the very tones of the voice grow musical. 
Homer throws in the expletives of some short sen- 
tences. With these two qualities, music and be- 
lief, he places his mind in a most beautiful brother- 
hood, in a sincere contact with his own characters ; 
there are no reticences. He allows himself to ex- 
pand with most touching loveliness, and occasionally 
it may be with an awkwardness that carries its own 
apology, upon all the matters which come in view 
of the subject of his work, and thus he affords the 
most decisive impression of the truly poetic nature 
of his genius. 



THE ODYSSEY 23 

We can see it in his very language, bis phrase- 
ology, and the most minute details of his work. 
Let us take, for instance, the epithets which he ap- 
plies to the objects of nature : "the Divine sea " (the 
beauty of that Divine sea was deep in the mind of 
Homer), " the dark colored sea ; " or to the king's 
houses which he admired, " the high wainscotted 
house," " the sounding house." For a very touch- 
ing instance, let us see Agamemnon when he swears, 
not merely by the gods, but by rivers and all ob- 
jects, stars, etc., and calls on them to witness his 
oath. He does not say w T hat they are, but he feels 
that he himself is a mysterious existence, standing 
by the side of them, mysterious existences ! 

There is more of character in his second poem, 
supposed to have been written a century later than 
the Iliad ; it treats of a higher state of civilization. 
There is an evident alteration, too, in the theology. 
In the first poem Pallas is represented as mixing in 
fights. In the second poem she does not fight at 
all, but is Minerva, or rather Athena, the Goddess 
of Wisdom. From the superior unity of it as a 
poem, it is impossible that it could have been writ- 
ten by many different people. It makes a deeper 
impression on one than the Iliad, though the genius 
of it is not greater, perhaps not so great. The heroes 
are different. Ulysses does not make much figure 
in the Iliad ; he is merely drawn an adroit, shifty, 
cunning man; but in the Odyssey he becomes of a 



24 ULYSSES 

tragic significance. He is not there the man of 
cunning and stratagem, but the " much enduring" 
a most endearing epithet ! We have a touching ac- 
count of all his experiences in misfortune. He 
proves himself in the later poem more thoughtful of 
those who have perished. What, for example, can 
be more lovely than the scene when, after escaping 
the man - devouring Laestrygonians, the snares of 
Circe, and other perils, he comes to the end of the 
Old World, the pillars of Hercules, to consult Tire- 
sias the prophet, and after performing different ob- 
lations among the surrounding shades, he sees the 
shade of his mother Anticlea, and poor Ulysses 
stands there, and there is his mother, a pale, inef- 
fectual shade, and he strives to clasp her in his arms, 
and he finds nothing but air ! In all nations we 
read and hear of such feelings as that ; we go for 
them into the heart of human nature. The same 
sentiment, for instance, we meet with in those beau- 
tiful lines of the "Queen's Marys." That, too, is 
a beautiful burst of anger where Ulysses, concealed 
in his own palace, beholds the shameful waste, the 
wild revel and riot of his wife's unworthy suitors. 
He is disguised as a beggar, and is known to no 
one until his old nurse discovers him by a scar 
in his leg, which she observes while washing his 
feet. The suitors treated him with insult, and 
flung bones and all sorts of things at him. Lastly, 
they tried to bend Ulysses' bow ; but the old bow 



SIMILES OF HOMER 25 

was too strong for them. The old beggar begged 
hard for a trial ; he took the bow, and with a fiery 
kindness and love for his old friend, examined it a 
long time without saying a word, to see if it were 
in the state in which he left it. Then he shook 
his rags, and, as Homer says, "he strode mightily 
across the threshold," and began to address the 
suitors. "Ye dogs," he says, "ye thought that I 
should never return again from Troy, and ye gave 
way to your wickedness, unmindful of gods above 
and men below ; but now your time is come. Tbe 
extreme limits of death await you." Then his ar- 
rows fell thick among them, and I believe there was 
quick work made with the suitors on that occasion. 
Numbers of traits like these have been collected by 
Goethe. There is an immense number of similes in 
Homer. Sometimes their simplicity makes us smile ; 
but there is great kindness and veneration in the 
smile. Thus, where he compares Ajax to an ass, 
Homer does not mean anything like insult in the 
comparison ; but he means to compare him, sur- 
rounded as he is by an overwhelming force of Tro- 
jans, to an ass getting into a field of corn, while all 
the boys of the neighborhood are endeavoring by 
blows and shouts to drive him away ; but the slow 
ass, unheeding them, crops away at the quick- 
growing corn, and will not leave off till he has had 
his fill. So it is with Ajax and the Trojans. There 
is a beautiful formula which he always uses when 



26 THE HOMERIC CIVILIZATION 

he describes death. "He thumped down falling, 
and his arms jingled abcut him." Now, trivial as 
this expression may at first appear, it does convey 
a deep sight and feeling of that phenomenon. The 
fall, as it were, of a sack of clay, and the jingle of 
armor, the last sound he was ever to make through- 
out time, who a minute or two before was alive 
and vigorous, and now falls a heavy dead mass ! 

But we must quit Homer. There is one thing, 
however, which I ought to mention about Ulysses, 
that he is the very model of the type Greek, a per- 
fect image of the Greek genius, a shifty, nimble, 
active man, involved in difficulties, but every now 
and then bobbing up out of darkness and confu- 
sion, victorious and intact. 

But I must quit this discussion about Homer, and 
I regret it much. I must omit altogether the in- 
sight into heroic times which he affords us : that 
farmer-grazier life ; the pillars of their halls covered 
with smoke, as he describes them ; the stable-yard 
at the principal portal to those kings' houses, high 
sounding houses, which he so much admires, piled 
up with sweepings of the stables, and other curious 
delineations of manners ; I must leave all that. 
Homer already betokens a high state of civilization ; 
in fact, by tradition, and still more by express 
records, we learn that the Greek genius had been 
then for 1,000 years working. As Horace says of 
their warriors, that " there were many brave men 



THE GREEK LANGUAGE 27 

before Agamemnon," we may say of their authors, 
that there were many beautiful and musical minds 
before Homer, of whom we have no account. The 
language, for example, was the best dialect, the 
most complete language that was ever spoken. If, 
from its precision and excellence, the French lan- 
guage is best adapted to chat and to courts and 
compliments, the Greek was no less suited to every 
kind of composition, down to the pointed epigram. 
Their theology, too ; their polity, both of war and 
peace, presupposes a civilization of 1,000 years or 
longer before Homer. After Homer, with the ex- 
ception of some minstrels, whom I like to fancy 
kindred to the Troubadours (on which point I shall 
say more when I come to the Troubadours), we have 
nothing in the way of literature for 400 or 500 
years. It was an age of war, convulsions, and mi- 
grations, about the Heraclidpe and others. Greece 
expanded itself in colonization, however, and other 
enterprises of an important character. The Greek 
mind at this epoch was rather philosophical than 
poetical. Pythagoras and the Seven Wise Men were 
of this time. 

What we have of these philosophers is very vague. 
One man speculated that the world was made out of 
fire ; another attributed it to the operation of water. 
There is something very enigmatic about Pythag- 
oras, the greatest man among them. Some of his 
precepts which are preserved, our want of in forma- 



28 PYTHAGORAS 

tion makes us consider entirely absurd and ridicu- 
lous. 

We cannot, for instance, understand the reason 
for his precept, abstain from beans — " faba abstine." 
What will immortalize Pythagoras is his discovery 
of the square of the hypothenuse. It seems that he 
may rather be said not to have invented it, but to 
have imported it, for I understand the Hindoos and 
other people of the East have long known it. It was 
a discovery, however, which in an advancing state of 
science could not remain unguessed. But a great 
part of the wisdom of our world was due to Pythag- 
oras, who acquired it in travelling over the world 
for information. It may have been talent, and it may 
not be easy to indicate what precisely we owe to him ; 
but it was not lost while men were to be found to 
work and improve on what he had left them. We 
may observe the like of many men. The print, then, 
which Pythagoras has left of his genius is the forty- 
seventh proposition of Euclid. There is also another 
one we owe to the Greeks. Archimedes discovered 
that the circumference of the sphere is three times 
as great as a line drawn through the centre from the 
opposite points of the circle which goes round it. 

Passing from philosophy to history, we come to a 
remarkable man, Herodotus. He was not exactly 
the next writer in order of time, as JEschylus pre- 
ceded him by a few years. His history is divided 
by his admiring editors into nine books, which they 



HERODOTUS 29 

named after the Nine Muses, or rather the division 
was made by him, while the designation and admira- 
tion were theirs. He was a native of Halicarnassus, 
and being early engaged in some of the troubles of 
that place, he was obliged to leave it, and set out on 
his travels. He attentively studied the histories of 
the various countries he visited, from Egypt to the 
Black Sea, and he put down everything he learned 
in writing ; for there were no books then, and, as he 
mentions, all the chronicles of importance were in- 
scribed on tablets of brass. At the age of thirty-nine 
he returned to Greece, and he read his work at the 
Olympic Games, where it excited intense admiration. 
It is, properly speaking, an encyclopaedia of the vari- 
ous nations, and it displays in a striking manner the 
innate spirit of harmony that was in the Greeks. It 
begins with Croesus, king of Lydia. Upon some hint 
or other, it suddenly goes off into a digression on 
the Persians, and then, apropos of something else, 
we have a disquisition on the Egyptians, and so on. 
At first we feel somewhat impatient of being thus 
carried away at the "sweet will" of the author ; but 
we soon find it to be the result of an instinctive spirit 
of harmony, and we see all these various branches of 
the tale come pouring down at last in the invasion of 
Greece by the Persians. It is that spirit of order 
which has constituted him the prose poet of his coun- 
try. It is curious to see the world he made for him- 
self. There is, in general, not a more veracious man, 



30 COMBINED HISTOEY AND FABLE 

a more intelligent man, than Herodotus. We see, 
as in a mirror, that what he writes from his own ob- 
servation is quite true. But when he does not pro- 
fess to know the truth of his narratives, it is curious 
to see the sort of Arabian Tales which he collects to- 
gether — of the nation of one-eyed men, of the Female 
Republic, the Amazons, of the people who live under 
an air always black with feathers, the Cimmerians ; 
yet even here the man's natural shrewdness is often 
evinced, as when he conjectures that the feathers may 
have been only falling snow-flakes ; and thus dying 
away gradually from authentic history into the fabu- 
lous. He was a good-natured man, not at all against 
the Persians ; but still there is an emphasis in the 
way he reports things, where the war with Persia is 
concerned, and in the speeches which he attributes 
to his characters, that shows the Greek feeling he 
had in him. He mentions with very little reproof 
the Lacedaemonian irregularity ; how the people took 
the Persian heralds who came to demand earth and 
water in token of submission, and flung them into a 
deep well, and told them that they would find both 
there in plenty. His account is the only one we have 
of that war. It is mainly through him that we be- 
come acquainted with Themistocles, that model of 
the type Greek in prose as Ulysses was in song. He 
lived, too, in that which I have called the Flower 
Period of Greece, fifty years after the Persian in- 
vasion, or 445 b.c, which, counting in the whole 100 



TIIEMISTOCLES 31 

years, was the most brilliant period of Grecian history. 
Themistocles was certainly one of the greatest men 
in the world. Had it not been for him, the Persians 
would have unquestionably conquered Greece. It is 
curious to observe the vacillations of the Greeks at 
this period. The Greeks wished to run and not to 
fight at all. Even after Leonidas had so gallantly 
perished, Themistocles had great difficulty in per- 
suading them not to take to flight in their ships ; if 
once they went to sea, he said, all was lost. And 
then his reply to Euiwbiades, which has been by 
some censured, appears to me to have been one of 
the grandest ever made by man. Eurybiades, in the 
heat of dispute, shook his staff in a menacing manner 
at him. "Strike, but hear," was the only return he 
made. To have drawn forth the sword by his side, 
and to have smote him dead for such an insult, would 
have been no more than natural ; but anyone could 
have done that. A poor drayman in a pothouse 
might have done it ; but to forbear, to waive his own 
redress in order to extinguish resentments, and keep 
the troops united for his country's sake, this appears 
to me truly great ! Like Ulysses, he displayed an 
uncommon degree of dexterity on occasions. For 
instance, when he was chased out of Greece he be- 
took himself to his worst enemy, the king of the Per- 
sians, whose armies he had destroyed, and who had 
offered a price for his head, but who now had the 
magnanimity to do him no wrong. At his first au- 



32 ^ESCHYLUS 

dience the king asked him what he thought of Greece. 
Themistocles, who felt that he knew nothing at all 
that he could answer to such a question, replied 
adroitly " that speech was like a Persian carpet rolled 
up, which was full of beautiful colors and images, 
but which required to be unrolled and spread out 
before the colors or the figures would be seen and 
appreciated. He therefore requested time to acquire 
a sufficient knowledge of the Persian tongue to be 
able to afford the king the information he sought in 
one single view, and not in a detached, disjointed 
fashion." The answer satisfied the king. 

Contemporary with Themistocles, and a little 
prior to Herodotus, Greek tragedy began. iEschy- 
lus I define to have been a truly gigantic man (I 
mean by this much more than the mere trivial figure 
of elocution usually expressed by the word gigan- 
tic), one of the largest characters ever known, and 
all whose movements are clumsy and huge, like 
those of a son of Anak. In short, his character is 
just that of Prome.theus himself as he has described 
him. I know no more pleasant thing than to study 
JEschylus. You fancy that you hear the old dumb 
rocks speaking to you of all things they had been 
thinking of since the world began, in their wild, 
savage utterances. His Agamemnon opens finely 
with the watchman on the top of a high tower, 
where he has been waiting a year, day and night, 
for the expected telegraph of the success of his 



SOPHOCLES 33 

countrymen. All at once, while he is yet speaking, 
the fire begins blazing. It is a very grand scene ; 
Clytemnestra afterward describes most graphically 
that signal fire, consuming the dry heath on Mount 
Ida, then prancing over the billows of the ocean, 
reflected from mountain top to mountain top, and 
lastly coming to Salamis. JEschylus had himself 
borne arms, and he must have been a terrible fright, 
quite a Nemsean lion ; and one says to oneself, when 
one reads his descriptions, " Heaven help the Per- 
sians who had to deal with iEschylus." It is said 
that when composing he had on a look of the 
greatest fierceness. He has been accused of bombast. 
From his obscurity he is often exceedingly difficult ; 
but bombast is not the word at all. His words come 
up from the great volcano of his heart, and often 
he has no voice for it, and it copulates his words 
together and tears his heart asunder. 

The next great dramatist is Sophocles. JEschylus 
had found Greek tragedy in a cart, under the charge 
of Thespis, a man of great consideration in his day, 
but of whom nothing remains to us, and he made it 
into the regular drama. Sophocles completed the 
work ; he was of a more cultivated and chastened 
mind than iEschylus. He translated it into a choral 
peal of melody. iEschylus only excels in his grand 
bursts of feeling. The Antigone of Sophocles is the 
finest thing of the kind ever sketched by man. 

Euripides, the next great dramatist, who has 
3 



34 EUEIPIDES 

sometimes been likened to Racine, and sometimes 
to Corneille (although I cannot see much resem- 
blance to Corneille at least), carried his compositions 
occasionally to the very verge of disease, and dis- 
plays a distinct commencement of the age of specu- 
lation and scepticism. He writes often for the 
effect's sake, not as Homer or iEschylus, rapt away 
in the train of action ; but how touching is effect 
so produced. He was accused of impiety. In a 
sceptical kind of man these two things go together 
very often — impiety and desire of effect. There is a 
decline in all kinds of literature when it ceases to 
be poetical and becomes speculative. Socrates was 
the emblem of the decline of the Greeks. His was 
the mind of the Greeks in its transition state ; he 
was the friend of Euripides. It seems strange to 
call him so. I willingly admit that he was a man 
of deep feeling and morality ; bat I can well under- 
stand the idea which Aristophanes had of him, that 
he was a man going to destroy all Greece with his 
innovations. To understand this, we have only to 
go back to what I said in my last lecture on the pe- 
culiar character of the Greek system of religion — 
the crown of all their beliefs. The Greek system, 
you will remember, was of a great significance and 
value for the Greeks. Even the most absurd-look- 
ing part of the whole, the Oracle, this too, was 
shown to have been not a quackery, but the result 
of a sincere belief on the part of the priests them- 



SOCRATES 35 

selves. No matter what you call the process, if the 
man believed in what he was about, and listened to 
his faith in a higher power, surely by looking into 
himself, apart from earthly feeling, he would be in 
that frame of mind by far the best adapted for judg- 
ing correctly and wisely of the future. They saw 
the most pious, intelligent, and reverend among 
them join themselves to this system, and thus was 
formed a sort of rude pagan church to the people. 
There were also the Greek games, celebrated in hon- 
or of the gods, and under the Divine sanction. We 
shall find that the Greek religion, in short, did es- 
sential service to the Greeks. The mind of the 
whole nation by its means obtained a strength and 
coherence. If I may not be permitted to say that 
through it all the nation became united to the Di- 
vine Power, I may, at any rate, assert that the high- 
est considerations and motives thus became familiar 
to each person, and were put at the very top of his 
mind ; but about Socrates' time this devotional 
feeling had in a great measure given way. He him- 
self was not more sceptical than the rest ; he shows 
a lingering kind of awe and attachment for the old 
religion of his country, and often we cannot make 
out whether he believed in it or not. He must have 
have had but a painful intellectual life — a painful 
kind of life altogether, one would think. He was 
the son of a statuary, and was originally brought up 
in that art ; but he soon forsook it, and appeared to 



36 DECLINE OF GREEK GENIUS 

give up all doings with the world excepting such as 
would lead to its spiritual improvement. From 
that time he devoted himself to the teaching of mo- 
rality and virtue, and he spent his life in that kind 
of mission. I cannot say that there was any evil in 
this ; but it does seem to me to have been of a char- 
acter entirely unprofitable. I have a great desire to 
admire Socrates, but I confess that his writings 
seem to be made up of a number of very wire- 
drawn notions about virtue. There is no conclusion 
in him ; there is no word of life in Socrates ! He 
was, however, personally a coherent and firm man. 
After him the nation became more and more sophis- 
tical. The Greek genius lost its originality ; it lost 
its poetry, and gave way to the spirit of speculation. 
Alexander the Great subdued them, and though 
they fought well under him, and though manufact- 
ures and so forth flourished for a long time after- 
ward, not another man of genius of any very re- 
markable quality appeared in Greece. 



LECTURE III. 

May 1th 

FIEST PERIOD— Continued 

The Romans: Their Character, Their Fortune, 
What They Did — From Virgil to Tacitus — End 
op Paganism. 

We have now been occupied some two days in 
endeavoring to obtain a view of the practical, 
spiritual way of life among the Greeks. I shall now 
endeavor to draw this matter to a conclusion, the 
survey of the most ancient period of this our West- 
ern Europe. 

W T e pass now to the Romans. We may say of 
this nation that, as the Greeks may be called 
the children of antiquity, from their naivete and 
gracefulness, while their whole history is an aurora, 
the dawn of a higher culture and civilization ; so 
the Romans were the men of antiquity, and their 
history a glorious, warm, laborious day, less 
beautiful and graceful, no doubt, than the Greeks, 
but most essentially useful. 

We have small time or space to enter largely 



38 RISE OF THE ROMANS 

into the discussion of Roman ways of thinking ; but 
it is a fortunate coincidence that the Romans, in 
their special aspect, do not require much discussion. 
The Roman life and the Roman opinions are quite 
a sequel to those of the Greeks — a second edition, 
we may say, of the Pagan system of belief and 
action. As authors or promulgators of books, 
they will require comparatively little of our atten- 
tion. 

The first appearance of the Romans, their enter- 
ing on the succession of the Greeks, is very pict- 
uresque. The Tarentines did certainly send — 
these, too, were Greeks, from of old inhabitants of 
Magna Graecia, of which I spoke in my first lecture 
— the Tarentines sent certainly embassies to Pyr- 
rhus, the king of Epirus, in the year 280 b.c. He 
was an ambitious, martial prince, bent on conquer- 
ing everybody, and therefore well suited for their 
wishes ; they entreated him to come over and assist 
them against a people called Romans — some bar- 
barians of that name. Pyrrhus embarked, landed, 
and gave battle to the Romans. According to Plu- 
tarch, when he saw them forming themselves in 
order of battle, he said, "Why, these barbarians do 
not fight like barbarians ! " and he accordingly after- 
ward found out to his cost that they did not fight 
like barbarians at all. A few years later he was 
worsted by the Romans, and again after that his 
forces were completely destroyed in another ejagage- 



THEIR HISTORIC MYTHS 39 

ment. He himself said that, "with him for their 
general and Komans for soldiers, he would conquer 
the world." 

One hundred years after this Greece itself was 
completely subdued by the Komans ; in the year 
before Christ 280, the war with Pyrrhus occurred. 
The Greek life was shattered to pieces against the 
harder, stronger life of the Romans. Corinth was 
taken and destroyed. Greece had degenerated ; 100 
years before Alexander, when Socrates died, we saw 
symptoms of not at all a healthy state of Greek 
existence ; and now, as Corinth was taken and 
burned, and even Egypt with her Ptolemies, and 
Antioch with her Seleucidse, fell successively into 
the power of the Romans, it was just as a beautiful 
crystal jar becomes dashed to pieces upon the hard 
rocks, so inexpressible was the force of the strong- 
Roman energy. According to their own account 
they had already been established 280 years before 
that event, or 750 B.C.; but nothing is certainly 
known of them before that time. It is now pretty 
well understood that their ancient historians were 
all Greeks, who adopted the annals of those who 
conquered them. Not long ago that which had 
been already suspected by antiquarians and learned 
men was made good to demonstration by a German 
scholar, of whom you have no doubt all heard, 
Niebuhr, that all that story in Livy of Romulus 
and Remus, the two infants who were thrown into 



40 ITALIAN PEOPLES 

the Tiber and stranded on its banks, it being then 
the time of flood, and their being suckled by a she- 
wolf, and also that story of the kings Tarquin, are 
nothing after all but a myth, or traditional tale, 
with a few faint vestiges of meaning in it, but of no 
significance for the historian ; at least, it refuses to 
yield it up to him. As to Niebuhr himself, he has 
accumulated a vast quantity of quotations and other 
materials, and, in short, his book is altogether a 
laborious thing ; but he affords, after all, very little 
light on that early period. One does not find that 
he makes any conclusion out except destruction ; 
and, after a laborious perusal of his work, we are 
forced to come to the conclusion that Niebuhr 
knew no more of the history of that period than 
Ida 

No doubt some human individual built a house for 
himself in the neighborhood of what must have then 
been a desert, overgrown with trees and shrubs — 
perhaps near to the old fountain, called afterward 
the Fountain of Juturna, and probably even then in 
existence — one of the old fountains of the earth ; but 
who he was, or how the work went on, we do not 
know, except that it became the most famous town 
in the world except Jerusalem, and destined to 
make the largest records of any town. Niebuhr has 
shown that the Eomans evince the characters of two 
distinct species of people. First, there are the Pe- 
lasgi, a people inhabiting the lower part of Italy 



CHARACTER 41 

from of old ; the same race as we have seen in 
Greece, where they had already become Hellenes. 
Secondly, there were the Etruscans or Tuscans, an 
entirely different race. Johannes von Midler sup- 
poses them to be northern Teutonic or Gothic. 
They are known by various remains of art, the terra 
cotta, baked earth. Winkelmann describes these 
remains to be of an Egyptian character from their 
gloomy heaviness, austerity, and sullenness. To the 
last moment the Etruscans continued to be the 
Haruspices of the Eomans. They themselves were 
men of a gloomy character, very different from the 
liveliness and gracefulness of the Greeks. In the 
Romans we have the traces of these two races joined 
together ; the one formed the noblesse, the other 
the commonalty. The main feature, independently 
of their works of art, which we observe in the old 
Etruscans is that they were an agricultural people, 
endowed with a sort of sullen energy, which is 
shown by the way in which they drained out lakes 
and marshes encumbering the soil, and these drains, 
I am told, are to be traced still ; and in the Eoman 
agricultural writers, such as Oato, Varro, and Colu- 
mella, we meet with many old precepts which seem 
quite traditional. 

We gather from these sources evidence of an in- 
tensely industrious thrift, a kind of vigorous thrift 
which was in that people. Thus, with respect to the 
ploughing of the earth, they express it to be a kind 



42 RELIGION OF THE ROMANS 

of blasphemy against Nature to leave a clod un- 
broken, and I believe that it is considered still to be 
good husbandry to pulverize the soil as much as 
possible. Now this feeling was the fundamental 
characteristic of the Roman people before they were 
distinguished as conquerors. 

Thrift is a quality held in no esteem, and is gen- 
erally regarded as mean ; it is certainly mean 
enough, and objectionable from its interfering with 
all manner of intercourse between man and man. 
But I say that thrift, well understood, includes in 
itself the best virtues that a man can have in this 
world ; it teaches him self-denial, to postpone the 
present to the future, to calculate his means and to 
regulate his actions accordingly. Thus understood, 
it includes all that man can do in his vocation. 
Even in its worst state it indicates a great people, I 
think. The Dutch, for example (there is no stronger 
people), the people of New England, the Scotch — all 
great nations ! In short, it is the foundation of all 
manner of virtue in a nation. Connected with this 
principle, there was in the Roman character a great 
seriousness and devoutness, and it was natural that 
there should be. The Greek religion was light and 
sportful compared to the Roman. The Roman dei- 
ties were innumerable ; Varro enumerates 30,000 
divinities. Their notion of fate, which we observed 
was the central element of Paganism, was much more 
productive of consequences than the Greek notion, 



METHOD OF THE ROMANS 43 

and it depended entirely on the original character 
which had been given to this people. Their notion 
was that Home was always meant to be the capital 
of the whole world ; that right was on the side of 
every man who was with Rome, and that therefore 
it was their duty to do everything for Rome. This 
belief tended very principally to produce its own 
fulfilment ; nay, it was itself founded on fact. "Did 
not Rome do so and so ? " they would reason. That 
stubborn grinding down of the globe which their 
ancestors practised — ploughing the ground fifteen 
times to make it produce a better crop than if it 
were ploughed fourteen times was afterward carried 
on by the Romans in all the concerns of their ordi- 
nary life, and by it they raised themselves above all 
other people. 

Method was their great principle, just as har- 
mony was that of the Greeks. The method of the 
Romans was a sort of harmony, but not that beau- 
tiful, graceful thing which was the Greek harmony. 
Theirs was the harmony of plans — an architectu- 
ral harmony, which was displayed in the arranging 
of practical antecedents and consequences. Their 
whole genius was practical. Speculation with them 
was nothing in the comparison. Their vocation 
was not to teach the sciences — what sciences they 
knew they had received from the Greeks — but to 
teach practical wisdom ; to subdue people into 
polity. Pliny declares that he cannot describe 



44 CIVILIZATION 

Rome. " So great is it that it appears to make 
heaven more illustrious, and to bring the whole 
world into civilization and obedience under its au- 
thority." This is what it did. It had gone on for 
300 years, fighting obscurely with its neighbors, 
and getting one state after another into its power, 
when the defeat of Pyrrhus gave it all Italy, and 
rendered that country entirely Rome. Some have 
thought that the Romans had done nothing else 
but fio-ht to establish their dominion where thev 

O v 

had not the least claim of right, and that they 
were a mere nest of robbers ; but this is evident- 
ly a misapprehension. Historians have generally 
managed to write down such facts as are apt to 
strike the memory of the vulgar, while they omit 
the circumstances which display the real character 
of the Romans. The Romans were at first an agri- 
cultural people. They b^iilt, it appears, their barns 
within their walls for protection ; but they got 
incidentally into quarrels with other neighboring 
states, and it is not strange that they should have 
taken the opportunity to compel them by force to 
adopt their civilization, such as it was, in prefer- 
ence to the mere foolish and savage method of their 
own. I do not mean to say that the Roman was a 
mild kind of discipline ; far from that. It was es- 
tablished only by hard contests and fighting ; but it 
was of all the most beneficial. In spite of all that 
has been said and ought to be said about liberty, it 



PUNIC WARS 45 

is true liberty to obey the best personal guidance, 
either out of our own head or out of that of some 
other. No one would wish to see some fool wan- 
dering about at his own will, and without any re- 
straint or direction ; we must admit it to be far bet- 
ter for him if some wise man were to take charge of 
him, even though by force, although that seems 
but a coarse kind of operation. But fighting was 
not at all the fundamental principle in their con- 
quests ; it was their superior civilization which at- 
tracted the surrounding nations to their centre. If 
their course had been entirely unwise, all the world 
would have risen in arms against the domineering 
tyrants forever claiming to be their rulers where 
they had no right at all, and their power could not 
have subsisted there as it did. 

After they had conquered Pyrrhus, and before 
their conflict, which took place a century after that, 
with Greece, the event occurred which was the 
crowning phenomenon of their history. They 
found their way into the neighboring island of 
Sicily, and there they met with the Carthaginians, 
another ancient state, of great power and prosper- 
ity, and, as far as probabilities went, more likely to 
subject the whole world than Rome herself was. 
But it was not so ordered. A collision ensued be- 
tween them, which lasted 120 years, and constituted 
the three Punic Wars. It was the hardest struggle 
Rome ever had — the hardest that ever was. The 



46 THE CARTHAGINIANS 

Carthaginians were as obstinate a people as the 
Romans themselves. They were of the race called 
Punic, Phoenic, or Phoenician, an Oriental people of 
the family now called Semitic because descended 
from Sem ; the same kind of people as the Jews, 
and as distinguished as Jews for being a stiff- 
necked people. I most sincerely rejoice that they 
did not subdue the Romans, but that the Romans 
got the better of them. We have indications which 
show that, compared to the Romans, they were a 
mean people, who thought of nothing but commerce, 
would do anything for money, and were exceedingly 
cruel in their measures of aggrandizement, and in 
all their measures. Their rites were of a kind per- 
fectly horrid ; their religion was of that sort so 
often denounced in the Bible, with which the Jews 
were to have nothing to do. In the siege of Car- 
thage the Romans relate that they offered their chil- 
dren to Bel, who is the same as Moloch, " making 
them to pass through the fire unto Moloch," in the 
language of Scripture, for they had a statue of the 
god in metal, which was heated red-hot, and they 
flung these hapless wretches into his outspread 
arms. Their injustice was proverbial ; the expres- 
sion " Punic faith " was well justified by the facts. 
This people, however, determined to exert their 
whole strength against the Romans. 

Hannibal, whom Napoleon conceived to be the 
greatest captain, the greatest soldier of antiquity, 



HANNIBAL 47 

was certainly a man of wonderful talent and tenac- 
ity, maintaining himself for sixteen years in Italy 
in spite of all the Roman power. He was scanda- 
lously treated on his return by his own countrymen. 
He was a most unfortunate man ; banished from 
Carthage, and at last, to prevent his falling into the 
hands of his enemies, the Romans, he had no re- 
source but poisoning himself. Carthage, however, 
was taken, and was burned for six days. It reminds 
us of the destruction of Jerusalem ; for, as I have 
observed, the Jews have always distinguished them- 
selves with the same tenacity and obstinacy, cling- 
ing to the same belief, probable or improbable, or 
even impossible. How the Romans got on after that 
we can see by the Commentaries which Julius Caesar 
has left us of his own proceedings, how he spent ten 
years of campaigns in Gaul cautiously planning all 
his measures before he attempted to carry them into 
effect. It is, indeed, a most interesting book, and 
evinces the indomitable force of Roman energy. 
The triumph of civil, methodic man over wild and 
barbarous man ; of calm, patient discipline over 
that valor which is without direction, which is 
ready to die if necessary, but knows nothing further 
than that. 

Notwithstanding what writers have said, it is clear 
that no one understands what the Roman Constitu- 
tion actually was. Niebuhr has attempted it, but he 
throws no light at all upon the subject, and I think 



48 THE ROMAN CONSTITUTION 

that in the absence of information to draw any in- 
ferences on one side or the other is extremely un- 
wise. It appears to have been a very tumultuous 
kind of polity, a continual struggle between the 
Patricians and Plebeians, the latter of whom were 
bent on having the lands of the State equally 
divided between them and the upper orders. We 
read of constant secessions to the Aventine, and 
there was rough work very frequently. Therefore, 
I cannot join in the lamentations made by some 
over the downfall of the Republic when Csesar took 
hold of it. It had been but a constant struggling 
scramble for prey, and it was well to end it, and to 
see the wisest, cleanest, and most judicious man of 
them place himself at the top of it. The Romans 
under the empire attained to their complete gran- 
deur, their dominion reached from the river Euphra- 
tes away to Cadiz, from the border of the Arabian 
desert to Severus' Wall up in the north of England. 
And what an empire it was ! teaching mankind that 
they should be tilling the ground, as they ought to 
do, instead of fighting one another ! For that is the 
real thing which every man is called on to do, to till 
the ground, and not slay his poor brother man. 

Coming now to their literature we find it to be 
a copy of that of the Greeks, but there is a kind of 
Roman worth in many of their books. Their lan- 
guage, too, has a character belonging to Rome. 
Etymologists have traced many words in it to the 



ROMAN LITERATURE 49 

Pelasgic, and some Lave been followed out so far 
as the Sanskrit, proving thus the existence in the 
Romans of the two kinds of blood which I have in- 
dicated. Its peculiarly distinguishing character, 
however, is its imperative sound and structure, fine- 
ly adapted to command. 

So in their books, as, for instance, the poems of 
Virgil and Horace, we see the Roman character of 
a still strength. But their greatest work was writ- 
ten on the face of the planet in which we live. 
Their Cj'clopean highways, extending from coun- 
try to country, their aqueducts, their Coliseums, 
their whole polity ! And how spontaneous all these 
things were ! how little any Roman knew what 
Rome was ! 

There is a tendency in all historians to place a 
plan in the head of everyone of their great charac- 
ters, by which he regulated his actions, forgetting 
that it is not possible for any man to have foreseen 
events, and to have embraced at once the vast com- 
plication of the circumstances that were to happen. 
It is more reasonable to attribute national progress 
to a great, deep instinct in every individual actor. 
Who of us, for example, knows England, though he 
m ay contribute to her prosperity ? Everyone here 
follows his own object ; one goes to India, another 
aspires to the army, and each after his own ends ; 
but all thus co operate together after all, one Eng- 
lishman with another, in adding to the strength and 
4 



50 NATIONAL CHARACTER 

wealth of the whole nation. The wisest govern- 
ment has only to direct this spirit into a proper 
channel, but to believe that it can lay down a plan 
for the creation of national enterprise is an entire 
folly. These incidents form the deep foundation of 
a national character ; when they fail the nation fails 
too, just as when the roots of a tree fail and the sap 
can mount the trunk and diffuse itself among the 
leaves no longer, the tree stops too. 

During a healthy, sound, progressive period of 
national existence there is in general no literature 
at all. 

In a time of active exertion the nation will not 
speak out its mind. It is not till a nation is ready 
to decline that its literature makes itself remarkable, 
and this is observable in all nations, for there are 
many ways in which a man or a nation expresses it- 
self besides books. The point is not to be able to 
write a book, the point is to have the true mind for 
it. Everything in that case which the nation does 
will be equally significant of its mind. If any great 
man among the Romans, Julius Csesar or Cato for 
example, had never done anything but till the 
ground they would have acquired equal excellence 
in that way. They would have ploughed as they 
conquered. Everything a great man does carries 
the traces of a great man. Perhaps even there is 
the most energetic virtue when there is no talk 
about virtue at all. I wish my friends here to con- 



UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF GREATNESS 51 

sider and keep this in view, that progress and civ- 
ilization may go on unknown to the people them- 
selves, that there may be a primeval feeling of en- 
ergy and virtue in the founders of a state whether 
they can fathom it or not. This feeling gets nearer 
every generation to be uttered, for though the son 
learns only such things as his father has invented, 
yet he will discover other things, and teach as well 
his own as his father's inventions in his turn to his 
children, and so it will go on working itself out till 
it gets into conversation and speech. We shall ob- 
serve precisely this when we come to the reign of 
Queen Elizabeth. All great things in short, whether 
national or individual, are unconscious things ! I 
cannot get room to insist on this here, but we shall 
see them as we go on, like seeds thrown out upon a 
wide fertile field ; no man sees what they are, but 
they grow up before us and become great. 

What did that man when he built his house know 
of Rome or of Julius Caesar that were to come? 
They were the product of time ! Faust, of Mentz, 
who invented printing, that subject of so much ad- 
miration in our times, never thought of the results 
that were to follow ; he found it a cheaper way of 
publishing his Bibles, and he used it for no other 
purpose than to undersell the other booksellers. 
In short, from the Christian religion down to the 
poorest genuine song there has boon no conscious- 
ness in the minds of the first authors of anything 



52 THE JENEID 

of excellence. Shakespeare, too, never seemed to 
imagine that he had any talent at all, his only ob- 
ject seems to have been to gather a little money, 
for he was very necessitous ; and when we do find 
consciousness the thing done is sure to be not a 
great thing at all ; it is a very suspicious circum- 
stance when anything makes a great noise about it- 
self ; it is like a drum, producing a great deal of 
sound, but very like to be empty. 

I shall here take a short survey of Roman books. 
The poem of Virgil, the JEneid, has long enjoyed, 
and will continue to enjoy, a great reputation. It 
ranks as an Epic poem, and one, too, of the same 
sort of name as the Iliad of Homer. But I think 
it entirely a different poem, and very inferior to 
Homer. There is that fatal consciousness, that 
knowledge that he is writing an epic, the plot, the 
style, all is vitiated by that one fault ! The charac- 
ters, too, are none of them to be compared to the 
healthy, whole-hearted, robust men of Homer, the 
" much-enduring " Ulysses, or Achilles, or Agamem- 
non. JEneas, the hero of the poem, is a lachrymose 
sort of man altogether. He is introduced in the 
middle of a storm, but instead of handling the 
tackle and doing what he can for the ship he sits 
still, groaning over his misfortunes ! " Was ever 
mortal," he asks, "so unfortunate as I am? chased 
from port to port by the persecuting Deities who 
give me no respite ! " and so on. And then he tells 



VIKGIL 53 

them how that he is the "pious iEneas,"in short, he 
is just that sort of lachrymose man there is hardly 
anything of a man in the inside of him. But Virgil 
succeeded much better in his other poems. This 
iEneid is not a fair sample of what he could do ; his 
descriptions of natural scenery are very beautiful, 
and he was a great poet when he did not observe 
himself, and when he let himself alone. 

His poetry is soft and sweet. In his women, too, 
he succeeded wonderfully ; his Dido was unmatched 
by anything that had gone before. He was a mild 
and gentle man, born poor, and the son of a peas- 
ant. He got his education from his father, and he 
cultivated his paternal inheritance, but being dis- 
possessed by some soldiers, as he himself tells us, 
of his estate, he had to go to Rome about it ; this 
was the beginning of his fortune. He became 
known to Mecsenas, and afterward to Augustus. 
He was a man of mild deportment, insomuch that 
the people of Naples, with whom he lived, used to 
call him " the Maid." He was an amiable man, and 
always in bad health, much subject to dyspepsia, 
and to all kinds of maladies that afflict men of 
genius ! The effect of his poetry is like that of 
some laborious mosaic of many years in putting 
together. There is also the Roman method, the 
Roman amplitude and regularity, just as these 
qualities were exhibited in the empire, but entirely 
without that abandonment of self which Homer had. 



54 HORACE 

His sentiments and descriptive sketches are often 
borrowed out of Homer or Theocritus, but the style 
and the poetry of the whole overspreading the work 
with a beautiful enamel enable us to judge of what 
he might have been had he less studied to produce 
effect. We must, however, conclude that he was, 
properly speaking, not an Epic poet. 

Of Horace I can afford to say almost nothing. 
He, too, was a sort of friend of Caesar. His was a 
similar history to that of Virgil, and, like him, he 
was not betrayed into perverseness by the posses- 
sion of great wealth. There was in him the same 
polish, " a curious felicity," as one person expresses 
it. I cannot admire always his moral philosophy. 
He is sometimes not at all edifying in his senti- 
ments. He belonged to the Epicurean school of 
philosophy, an unbelieving man, with no thought 
for anything but how to make himself comfortable, 
and to enjoy himself in this world; until a dark 
melancholy comes over him, at which time his opin- 
ions appear in their most respectable shape, and 
then he sees the all-devouring death expecting him, 
he knows well with what issues, and at last takes 
refuge from the contemplation in Epicurean enjoy- 
ment ! In his writings he displays a worldly kind 
of sagacity, but it is a great sagacity ! 

It is remarkable how soon afterward Koman 
literature had quite degenerated. Ovid, the next 
celebrated poet, has an ever-present consciousness 



SENECA 55 

of himself, and is very inferior to Horace cr VirgiL 
From this time we get more and more into self-con- 
sciousness and into scepticism, and not long after- 
ward without being able to find any bottom at all 
to it. I refer to Seneca and Lucan, his nephew, and 
the whole family of Senecas. Seneca was originally 
from Cordova in Spain ; he got into politics, and he 
was Nero's master or tutor. 

He has left some works on philosophy, and there 
are some tragedies (twelve, I think) which go by his 
name. Some of these are said to have been written 
by his nephew, Lucan ; at all events, they were 
written by one of Seneca's school, and fully imbued 
with his philosophy. Now, if we want an example 
of a diseased self-consciousness, an exaggerated im- 
agination, a mind blown up with all sorts of strange 
conceits, the spasmodic state of intellect, in short, 
of a man morally unable to speak the truth on any 
subject, we have it in Seneca. He was led away by 
this strange humor into all sorts of cant and insin- 
cerity. He exaggerated the virtues, for instance, to 
an extreme quite ridiculous, asserting that there is 
no such thing as vice at all, that man is all powerful 
and like to a god in this world, having it in his power 
to triumph over evils and calamities of all kinds by 
his mere will ; and all this while Seneca himself was 
a mere pettifogging courtier, careful of nothing but 
amassing money, and flattering Nero in all his ways. 
Indeed, it is impossible to read such writings as he 



56 TACITUS 

has left us without suspecting something. We can- 
not help saying, " All is not right here." I willingly 
admit that he had a strong desire to be sincere, and 
that he endeavored to convince himself that he was 
right; but even this, when in connection with the 
rest, constitutes of itself a fault of a dangerous kind. 
We may trace it all to that same spirit of self- 
conceit, pride, and vanity, which is the ruin of all 
things in this world, and always will be. The vices 
of this kind of literature connect themselves in a 
natural sequence with the decline of Koman virtue 
altogether, when that people had once come to 
disbelief in their own gods, and to put all their 
confidence in their money, believing that with 
their money they could always buy their money's 
worth. 

This order of things was closely succeeded by 
moral abominations of the most dreadful kind, such 
as were not known before nor ever since, the most 
fearful abominations under the sun. But it is curious 
to observe that such is the power of genius to make 
itself heard and felt in all times that the most sig- 
nificant and the greatest of Eoman writers occurs 
posterior to these times of Seneca — I mean Tacitus. 
In those extraordinary circumstances of his times he 
displays more of the Roman spirit, perhaps, than 
any one before him. His mind was not hid under 
all that black mass of blasphemy, covetousness, and 
villainy. He shows it in his estimate of the Ger- 



TACITUS ON THE GERMANS 57 

mans even, for it was something new for any Roman 
to speak favorably of barbarians, or to bold any other 
opinion of their fellow-men than that every man was 
born to be a slave to Rome. In the Germans he 
sees a kind of worth, and seems to contemplate with 
a kind of shuddering anticipation the time when 
these Germans were to come and sweep away his 
corrupted country. " The Germans," he says, " wage 
a continual war with one another ; may the gods 
grant that it may always be so." In the middle of 
all those facts in the literature of his country, which 
correspond so well with what we know of the history 
of Rome itself, in the middle of all that quackery 
and puffery coming into play, when critics wrote 
books to teach you how to hold out your arm and 
your leg, in the middle of all this absurd and wicked 
period, Tacitus was born, and was enabled to be a 
Roman after all ! He stood like a Colossus at the 
edge of a dark night, and he sees events of all kinds 
hurrying past him and plunging he knows not where, 
but evidently to no good, for falsehood and coward- 
ice never yet ended anywhere but in destruction. 
He sees all this and narrates it with grave calmness, 
giving us quietly his notions of Tiberius and others, 
and, as he goes on, he does not seem startled but 
full of deep views, unable to account for it but con- 
vinced that it will end well somehow or other, for he 
has no belief but the old Roman belief, full of their 
old feelings of goodness and honesty. He is greatly 



58 AGE OF SPECULATION 

distinguished from all of that time, greatly distin- 
guished from Livy, who has collected together all 
the soft and beautiful myths of the time and woven 
them into a highly interesting history ; but, as a his- 
torian, he was a far inferior man to Tacitus. 

I shall now quit the subject of Pagan literature, 
for after Tacitus all things went on sinking down 
more and more into all kinds of disease and ruin. 
After the survey which we have made, we come to 
the conclusion that there is a strange coherence be- 
tween the healthy belief and outward destiny of a 
nation. Thus the Greeks went on with their wars 
and everything else most prosperously till they be- 
came conscious of their condition — till the man be- 
came solicitous after other times. Socrates, we saw, 
is a kind of starting-point, from which we trace 
their fall into confusion and wreck of all sorts. So 
it was with the Romans. Cato the Elder used to 
tell them: "The instant you get the Greek litera- 
ture among you there will be an end of the old Ro- 
man spirit." He was not listened to ; the rage for 
Greek speculation increased ; he himself found it im- 
possible to keep back, although he was very angry 
about it, and in his old age he learned the Greek 
language and had it taught to his sons. It was too 
late; nobody could believe any longer, and every- 
one had set his mind upon being a man and think- 
ing for himself. In the middle of all that the event 
occurred, which I shall repeat in the language of 



TACITUS AND CHRISTIANITY 59 

Tacitus, who, after mentioning that in the reign 
of Nero Rome was set on fire, and, as was said, by 
order of that prince, who did it most probably be- 
cause he wished to build some new streets and dis- 
liked to take the trouble of clearing away the old 
houses in any other manner, and that he sat playing 
his harp and watching the fire, whereupon a great 
rumor became raised abroad, goes on to say, as I 
have almost literally rendered it from the Ann. xv. 
chap. 44 : 

" So for the abolishing of that rumor he caused 
to be indicted and afterward punished with exqui- 
site pains a people hated for their wickedness {per 
flagitia invisos), whom the vulgar called Christians. 
The author of that sect was one Christ (Christus 
quidam), who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to 
death by the procurator of Syria, Pontius Pilate, 
for his hateful superstition {propter exitiale super- 
stitione), whereby being for a time suppressed, it 
broke out again not only in Judaea, where it first 
arose, but spread itself also unto other countries, 
and finally unto Rome itself, where all things wicked 
and horrible come at last to gather themselves to- 
gether." 

Tacitus lived eighty-eight years after the events 
which he here describes. It was given to him to 
see no deeper into the matter than appears from 
the above account of it. But he and the great em- 
pire were soon to pass away forever ! — and it was 



60 THE FORCE OF THE FUTURE 

in this despised sect — this Ghristus quidam — it was 
in this new character that all the future world lay- 
hid ! 

This will furnish us with the subject of our next 
lecture. 



LECTURE IV. 

May 11th 

SECOND PEKIOD 

Middle Ages— Christianity ; Faith— Inventions— Pi- 
ous Foundations— Pope Hildebrand — Crusades — 
Troubadours — Niebelungen Lied. 

We have now to direct our attention to a ruder 
state of man, and we shall observe with what 
shrewdness man will in this state lay hold of the 
information and civilization afforded him. For we 
have traced our subject through the Old World, 
and now we come to the New ; we investigated, first 
among the Greeks and next among the Romans, 
the system of Polytheism and Paganism. We have 
now an equal period of history to survey, that of 
the modern era, for about 1800 years from the birth 
of Christ ; having already passed through as much 
before that epoch as we are now from it. We shall, 
therefore, commence with what we can call the 
Transition Period, or period of the formation of this 
present life of man, that in which all our beliefs 
and our general way of existence shape themselves. 



62 MIDDLE AGES 

The Middle Ages used to be called ages of darkness, 
rudeness, and barbarity, " the Millennium of Dark- 
ness," as one writer calls them ; but it is universally 
apparent now that these ages are not to be so 
called. The only writers in the early part of those 
times — times of convulsions, cruel periods — were 
Romans. The barbarians who rushed out into the 
scene of conquest were not given to writing, and 
accordingly these writers indulge in much abuse of 
their invaders and wild lamentation, recounting the 
fall of their empire with a dense shriek of horror 
and indignation. With them, therefore, the name 
of barbarian is a synonym for whatever is bad and 
base; to this day the name of "Goth" is so applied, 
even with us, the descendants of those conquerors. 
It was a great and fertile period, however — that in- 
vasion of the barbarians and their settlement in the 
Roman Empire. There is a sentence which I find 
in Goethe, full of meaning in this regard. It must 
be noted, he says, "that belief and unbelief are two 
opposite principles in human nature. The theme 
of all human history, so far as we are able to per- 
ceive it, is the contest between these two principles." 
"All periods," he goes on to say, "in which belief 
predominates, in which it is the main element, the 
inspiring principle of action, are distinguished by 
great, soul-stirring, fertile events, and worthy of 
perpetual remembrance. And, on the other hand, 
when unbelief gets the upper hand, that age is un- 



BELIEF AND UNBELIEF 63 

fertile, unproductive, and intrinsically mean ; in 
which there is no pabulum for the spirit of man, 
and no one can get nourishment for himself ! " 
This passage is one of the most pregnant utterances 
ever delivered, and we shall do well to keep it in 
mind in these disquisitions on this period ; for in 
the Middle Ages we see the great phenomenon of 
belief gaining the victory over unbelief. And this 
same remark is altogether true of all things what- 
ever in this world, and it throws much light on the 
history of the whole world, and that in two ways, 
for belief serves both as a fact itself and the cause 
of other facts. It appears only in a healthy mind, 
and it is at once an indication of it and the cause 
of it. For though doubt may be necessary to a cer- 
tain extent in order to prepare subject-matter for 
reflection, it can be only after all a morbid condi- 
tion of the intellect, and an intermediate one ; but 
that speculation should end in doubt is wholly un- 
reasonable. It is, as I have said, a morbid state ; it is 
a state of mental paralysis — a highly painful state of 
mind, one which the healthy man won't entertain 
at all, but, if he can do nothing better with it, dis- 
misses it altogether. There is no use in it that one 
can understand except to give the mind something 
to work on ! Belief, then, is the indication and the 
cause of health, and when we see it in a whole 
world we may be sure that the world is able to Bay 
and to do something. It is the heart rather than 



64 



the intellect that Goethe has in mind in the passage 
quoted. It is the heart after all that most influ- 
ences. Our knowledge of physics, our whole circle 
of scientific acquirements, depends on what figure 
each man will give it and shape to himself in his 
own heart ! 

Thus in the Middle Ages, being in contact with 
fact and reality, in communion with truth and nat- 
ure, not merely with hearsays and vain formulas, 
but feeling the presence of truth in the heart, that 
is the great fact of the time — belief ! And this is 
independent of their dogmas. In the genuine Pa- 
gan times, too, among much that is absurd and rep- 
rehensible, we found a great good accomplished by 
its means ; there was there also a belief, which was 
accompanied by an adjustment of themselves toward 
these opinions of theirs. They had discovered and 
recognized in themselves, whether they expressed it 
in words or not, the existence of a Supreme Ar- 
rangement ; they had not discovered it without per- 
ceiving the numerous inconsistencies and contradic- 
tions of their religious system ; these had doubtless 
struck them at first, but they had adjusted them- 
selves to that ; but their way of religion and life 
had this kind of belief in it — belief in one's self ! 
They did not fail to observe what a thing man is — 
what a high, royal nature is given to him ! This 
appears in particular in later times, when the old 
religion had altogether passed away, and its intel- 



THE CYNIC PHILOSOPHEKS 65 

lectual results only remained, in their philosophers, 
for instance, and strikingly above all others in the 
Stoics, a set extremely prevalent in Rome ; in later 
times all that the Romans had to adhere to in the 
way of belief. 

One sees in their opinions a great truth, but ex- 
tremely exaggerated : that bold assertion, for ex- 
ample, in the face of all reason and fact, that pain 
and pleasure are the same thing ; that man is indif- 
ferent to both ; that he is a king in this world ; that 
nothing can conquer him ! Still more strikingly is 
it displayed in a peculiar sort of Stoicism, the Cynic 
set of philosophers. There have been few more 
striking characters than that of Diogenes the Cynic, 
adopting the Stoic principle and carrying it out 
to its extreme development, and professing to set 
himself above all accidental circumstances, such as 
poverty or disgrace, and taking them rather as a 
sort of schooling, as a lesson he was to learn and in 
the best manner he could. D'Alembert pronounces 
him to have been one of the greatest men of an- 
tiquity, although there were in him several things 
counter to D'Alembert's way of thinking ; decency, 
for example, was of no significance for him. It is 
strange to see that remarkable interview — the one 
the conqueror of all the world, in his pride and 
glory and splendor ; the other a poor needy man, 
with nothing besides his skin save the soul that was 
in him ! Alexander asked him in their interview 



66 CHRISTIANITY 

(for Diogenes had a sharp, sour tongue in his head) 
if he could give him anything ? " You can stand out 
of the sun and give me light." That was all Alex- 
ander could give Diogenes ! This was certainly a 
great thing, and altogether worthy to be recog- 
nized ; it was much for man. But if we look into 
the Christian religion, that dignification of man's 
life and nature, we shall find, indeed, this also in it 
— to believe in one's self, that thing given to him 
by the Creator. But then how unspeakably more 
human is this belief, not held in proud scorn and 
contempt of other men, in cynical disdain or indig- 
nation at their paltrinesses, but received by extermi- 
nating pride altogether from the mind, and held in 
degradation and deep human sufferings. There is 
darkness and affliction in all things around it in its 
origin. We saw what it appeared to Tacitus, the 
greatest man of his time, some seventy years after 
its origin. Its outward history was on a par with 
its interior meaning ; its province was not to en- 
courage pride, but to cut that down altogether. 
There is a remarkable passage of Goethe, where he 
calls it " the worship of Sorrow," its doctrine " the 
sanctuary of Sorrow." It was, he continues (re- 
garding it simply on its secular side, not in view of 
any particular religious sect, but just as the Divinest 
thing that could be looked at), the showing to man 
for the first time that suffering and degradation, 
the most hateful to the sensual regard, possessed a 



THE DOCTRINE OF ETERNITY 67 

beauty which surpassed all other beauty. It is not 
our part to touch on sacred things, but we should 
altogether fail to discover the meaning of this His- 
torical Period if we did not lay deeply to heart the 
meaning of Christian ity. In another point of view 
we may regard it as the revelation of eternity exist- 
ing in the middle of time to man. He stands here 
between the conflux of two elements, the Past and 
the Future ; the thing that we are at this moment 
speaking or doing comes to us from the beginning 
of days. The word I am this moment speaking 
came to me from Cadmus of Thebes, or some other 
ancient member of the great family of Adam, and it 
will go on to an endless future ! 

Every man may with truth say that he waited for 
a whole eternity to be born, and that he has now a 
whole eternity waiting to see what he will do now 
that he is born. It is this which gives to this little 
period of life, so contemptible when weighed agaiust 
eternity, a significance it never had without it. It 
is thus an infinite arena, where infinite interests are 
played out ; not an action of man but will have its 
truth realized and will. go on forever. His most in- 
significant action, for some are more so than others, 
carries its print of this endless duration. 

This truth, whatever may be the opinions we 
hold on Christian doctrines, or whether we hold 
upon them a sacred silence or not, we must recog- 
nize in Christianity and its belief, independently of 



68 CONVERSION OF THE GERMANS 

all theories, for it was not revealed till then, and it 
is not possible to imagine results of a more signifi- 
cant nature than those it produced. One can fancy 
with what mute astonishment the invading barba- 
rians must have paused when their wild barbarous 
minds were first saluted with the tidings of that great 
Eternity lying round the world, this earth now be- 
come an intelligible thing to them ; how this wild 
German people, heated with conquest and tumult, 
paused and took it all in, this doctrine, without ar- 
gument. I believe that argument was not at all 
used ; it was done by the conviction of the men 
themselves, who spoke into convincible minds ; and 
herein is the great distinction of ancient from 
modern Europe, nay, of modern Europe from all 
the world besides. 

It has been truly said by Goethe that this is a 
progress that we are all capable of making and 
destined to make, and from which, when made, we 
can never retrograde. There may be all manner of 
arguments and delusions, and true and false specu- 
lations about it ; but we can well understand the 
Divine doctrine of Eternity, manifesting itself in 
time, and time drawing all its meaning from 
eternity. It only requires a pure heart, and then 
if all else were destroyed, if there were even no 
Bible, and a mere tradition remaining of its having 
once been, from the progress once made, we should 
never go back. If to this sublime proceeding we 



LOYALTY 09 

add the character of the northern people — the 
German people, best suited of all others to receive 
the faith and maintain it and develop it, being- 
endowed with the largest nature, the deepest affec- 
tions ; if, I say, we add these together, we shall 
have the two leading phenomena of the Middle 
Ages, the possibility of great nations constructing 
themselves, and of all good things coming out of 
them. It is curious accordingly to see with what 
facility the matter proceeds ; in two centuries after 
the people of the North had begun to break in on 
the South, from Alalia downward, how quietly do 
all things settle down into arrangement, in one just 
way, everything with a new character of its own, and 
all displaying that shrewdness which, to refer to the 
text w T ith which we set out, marks the intellectual 
efforts of societies in their rude state. 

There was that thing which we call loyalty. 
That attachment of man to man, indeed, is as old 
as the existence of man himself. The kings and 
chiefs of early times had their dependents ; Achilles, 
for example, had his Myrmidons. The feeling must 
exist among men if they are to maintain themselves 
in society. At the same time, it had never before 
nor anywhere existed in such a shape as it has since 
assumed among the modern nations of Europe, the 
descendants of the Romans and Germans, men of 
the deepest affections, and imbued with the sacred 
principle of Christianity ; in them resulting in every- 



70 THE CHURCH 

thing great and noble, and in this feeling of loyalty 
among others. In these times loyalty is much kept 
out of sight and little appreciated, and many minds 
regard it as a sort of obsolete chimera, looking 
more to independence or some such thing now re- 
garded as a great virtue ; and this is very just, and 
most suitable to this time of movement and pro- 
gress. It must be granted at once that to exact 
loyalty to things so bad as to be not worth being- 
loyal to is quite an insupportable thing, and one 
that the world would spurn at once. This must be 
conceded ; yet the better thinkers will see that loy- 
alty is a principle perennial in human nature, the 
highest that unfolds itself there in a temporal, secu- 
lar point of view ; for there is no other kind of way 
by which human society can be safely constructed 
than that feeling of loyalty, whereby those who are 
worthy are reverenced by those who are capable of 
reverence. Thus, in the Middle Ages it was the 
noblest phenomenon, the finest phase in society 
anywhere. Loyalty was the foundation of the state. 
Another great cardinal point, a hinge on which 
all other things were suspended, was the Church, 
the institution appointed to keep alive the sacred 
* light of religion. No doubt the men of that age 
held many absurd doctrines, but we must remember 
that it is not scientific doctrines that constitute 
belief : it is the sincerity of heart which constitutes 
the whole merit of belief. Many of their doctrines, 



PLIKY'S LETTER TO TRAJAN 71 

doubtless, were absurd and entirely incredible, but 
we shall blind ourselves to their significance if we 
do not see into them independently of theology. 
It is curious to trace the phenomena of the Christian 
Church in early days, how it grows on in neglect 
and indifference. Besides the remarkable passage 
out of Tacitus, which I read in my last lecture, we 
have another curious document probably a little 
later, the celebrated letter of Pliny to the Emperor 
Trajan respecting the Christians of Bithyuia. It 
was written prior to the year 100 a.d., but there is 
no date to it. It is very striking to observe how, in 
the middle of that black night which then over- 
spread the earth, of that great darkness, a small 
light begins to make itself seen ! But Pliny could 
not see anything important in these people. He 
writes that " certain people among them admit that 
they are Christians, some say that they were two or 
three years ago, but have since left them." But 
some did admit that they were Christians. They 
were far, he goes on to say, from being given to 
lies and bad practices (flagitia, flagitious practices) ; 
they told him that they met together and exhorted 
one another on certain days (doubtless on the 
Christian Sabbath) before sunrise, precisely to avoid 
all that, and that after so exhorting themselves they 
met together at a friendly repast (doubtless this was 
the Communion). That they were quite free aud 
unspotted, however, from the vices with which the 



72 GROWTH OF THE CHURCH 

world charged them, that world itself wholly im- 
mersed in those very vices ! And he recommends 
that they should be let alone, and should not be 
persecuted, for he does not think that they will last 
much longer ; they had agreed to give up meeting 
together, and to avoid all that would give offence. 
What is a very remarkable fact, he goes on to say 
that he thinks that they may go on with their opin- 
ions without danger to the State religion, for that 
he had been recently refitting the temples, and that 
they were now more crowded than ever they were, 
and, in short, that the old spirit was returning, and 
that everything would revive. This was the char- 
acter of the Church down to the end of the first 
century. From that time churches began to spring 
up everywhere, synods were established, and bishops 
in every church ; there is no doubt, too, that the 
seat of the main ecclesiastical power was at Home, 
the Bishop of which city had a pre-eminence among 
the bishops. This became fully established under 
Gregory the Great. 

At that time the name of the chief Bishop was 
not Pope but Primate. From Rome he sent his 
commands to all parts of the Christian world. He 
it was who sent the monk Augustine with a few 
other monks to this country, who converted our 
Saxon ancestors to Christianity. Like all other 
matters there were contradictions and inconsistencies 
without end, but it should be regarded in its ideal. 



HILDEBRAND 73 

The greatest height to which it ever did attain in 
the world was in the time of Pope Hildebrand, 
about the year 1070, or soon after the conquest of 
Eugland by William the Conqueror. That was its 
time of highest perfection. All Europe then was 
firm and unshaken in the faith. It abounded in 
churches, and monks, and convents, founded for 
meditation and silent study ; that was the ideal of 
monachism. It was the age of teachers and preach- 
ers of all kinds, sent into all parts of the world to 
convert all the heathen into Christianity. It was 
the Church itself, for which human society was 
then constituted, for what were human things in 
comparison with the eternal world which lay beyond 
them. Hildebrand was, it appears, though not 
certainly, the son of a Tuscan peasant ; he was a 
great and deep thinker, and at an early period he 
entered the monastic life, as it was natural he 
should, for there was no other congenial employ- 
ment open to him. He became one of the monks 
in the famous monastery of Clugny. There he soon 
distinguished himself for his superior attainments, 
was successively promoted and employed by several 
Popes on missions of importance, and at last he 
became Pope himself. One can well see from his 
history what it was he meant. He has been re- 
garded by some classes of Protestants as the wicked- 
est of men, but I do hope that we have at this day 
outgrown all that. He perceived that the Church 



74 THE TEMPORAL POWEPw 

was the highest thing in the world, and he resolved 
that it should be at the top of the whole world, 
animating human things and giving them their 
main guidance. He first published the Decretal 
Order on the celibacy of the clergy, determined 
that they should have nothing to do with worldly 
affairs, but should work as soldiers enlisted in a 
sacred cause. 

There was another pretension made by him, 
which, indeed, had been the subject of controversy 
before, but which Hildebrand put forward in quite 
a new light. That was, that popes, bishops, and 
priests had no right to be invested with their offices 
by the Emperor of Germany, or any temporal lord, 
but that being once nominated by the Church they 
were henceforth validly invested with their offices, 
and this was so because the world could have no 
legitimate control in things spiritual. The Emperor 
of Germany, at that time Henry IV., a young man 
and not of sufficient wisdom to know the age, re- 
sisted this pretension, and the Pope resisted him, 
and there ensued great quantities of confused strug- 
gling. At last, in the month of January, 1077, at 
the castle of Canossa, now in ruins near Eeggio in 
Modena, whither Hildebrand had retired after hav- 
ing excommunicated the Germans, and freed the 
Saxons then in arms against Henry's authority, 
Henry became reduced to the painful necessity of 
coming away to him, and offering to submit to any 



HENRY AT CANOSSA 75 

punishment the Pope should appoint. His recep- 
tion was most humiliating ; he was obliged to leave 
all his attendants at some distance, and come him- 
self in the garb of a penitent with nothing on him 
but a woollen cloth, and there to stand for three 
days in the snow before he was suffered to come 
into the Pope's presence ! One would think from 
all this that Hildebrand was a proud man, but he 
was not a proud man at all, and seems from many 
circumstances to have been, on the contrary, a man 
of very great humility ; but here he treated himself 
as the representative of Christ, and far beyond all 
earthly authorities, and he reasoned that if Christ 
was higher than the Emperor the Emperor ought to 
subject himself to the Church's power as all Europe 
was obliged to do. In these circumstances, doubt- 
less, there are many questionable things, but then 
there are many cheering things, for we see the son < 
of a poor Tuscan peasant, solely by the superior 
spiritual force that was in him, humble a great 
Emperor at the head of the iron force of Europe ! 
And to look at it in a tolerant point of view, it is 
really very grand, it is the spirit of Europe set above 
the body of Europe, mind triumphant over brute 
force ! 

Hildebrand endured great miseries after that ; he 
was for three years besieged by Henry in the castle 
of St. Angelo until he died. Some have feared that 
the tendency of such things is to found a theocracy, 



76 THE CRUSADES 

and have imagined that if this had gone on till our 
days a most abject superstition would have become 
established. But this is entirely a vain theory. 
The clay that is about man is always sufficiently 
ready to assert its rights ; the danger is always the 
other way, that the spiritual part of man will be- 
come overlaid with his bodily part. 

This, then, was the Church. The Church and 
the loyalty of the time were the two hinges of soci- 
ety ; and that society was in consequence distin- 
guished from all societies which had preceded it, 
presenting an infinitely greater diversity of view, 
a better humanity, a largeness of capacity. This 
society has since undergone many changes, but I 
hope that spirit may go on for countless ages yet, 
the spirit which at that period was set going. 

A strange phase of the healthy belief, the deep 
belief of the time, were the Crusades. I am far 
from vindicating the Crusades in a political point 
of view, but at the same time we should miss the 
grand apex of that life if we did not for a moment 
dwell upon these events. It was a strange thing to 
see how Peter, a poor monk, recently come home 
from Syria, but fully convinced of the propriety of 
the step, set out on his mission through Europe ; 
how he talked about it to the Pope, regarding it as 
a proper and indispensably necessary duty to re- 
move the abomination of Mahometanism from the 
sacred places, till in 1096 the Council of Clermont 



PETER THE HERMIT 77 

was held in Auvergne. One sees Peter riding 
along, dressed in his brown cloak, with the rope of 
the penitent tied around him, swaying all hearts 
and burning them up with zeal, and stirring up 
steel-clad Europe till it shook itself at his words. 
What a contrast to that greatest of orators, De- 
mosthenes, spending nights and years in the con- 
struction of those balanced sentences which are still 
read with admiration, descending into the smallest 
details, speaking with pebbles in his mouth and the 
waves of the sea beside him ; and all his way of life 
in this manner occupied during many years, and 
then to end in simply nothing at all, for he did 
nothing for his country with all his eloquence ; and 
then see this poor monk start out here without any 
art at all, but with something far greater than art ! 
For as Demosthenes was once asked, what was the 
secret of a fine orator, and he replied, action ! 
action ! action ! so, if I were asked it, I should say, 
belief ! belief ! belief ! He must be first persuaded 
himself if he wish to persuade other people. 

The Crusades altogether lasted upward of 100 
years ; Jerusalem was taken in 1099. Some have 
admired them because they served to bring all Eu- 
rope into communication with itself, others because 
it produced the elevation of the middle classes ; but 
I say that the great result which characterizes them 
and gives them all their merit is, that in them Eu- 
rope for one moment proved its belief, proved that 



78 CHARACTER OF THE AGE 

it believed in the invisible world which surrounds 
the outward visible world, that this belief had for 
once entered into the circumstances of man ! This 
fact that for once something sacred entered into the 
minds of nations, has been more productive of prac- 
tical results than any other could be ; it lives yet, 
transmitting itself by unseen channels as all good 
things do in this world. 

In these ages it is not to be expected that there 
was any literature : it was a healthy age. We have 
remarked in the last lecture that the appearance of 
literature is a sign that the age producing it is not 
far from decline and decay. The great principles 
which animate its development are at work, deep 
and unconscious, long before they get to express 
themselves, and the people follow by instinct their 
commands. Literature could not exist in such a 
time when even the nobles and great men were un- 
able to write. Their only mode of signing charters 
was by dipping the glove-mailed hand into the ink 
and imprinting it on the charter. A strong warrior 
would disdain to write, he had other functions than 
this ; and though writing is one of the noblest utter- 
ances, for speech is so, there are other ways besides 
that of expressing one's self, and to lead a heroic 
life is, perhaps, a greater thing than to write a he- 
roic poem ! This was the case of the Middle Ages. 
I do not mean to say that the ideal of the age was 
perfect, far from that ! No age that has yet been 



THE TROUBADOUES 79 

has not been one of contradictions, which make the 
heart sick and sore if the heart be earnest. But I 
assert that an ideal did exist ; the heroic heart was 
not then desolate and alone, it was appreciated, and 
its great result was a perpetual struggling forward, 
that was the real age of gold ! We know that in 
any other way there has never been such a thing as 
an age of gold. Nothing is to be won but by hu- 
man exertions. Bat a literature did come at last. 
I allude to the Troubadours and Trouveres of the 
twelfth century. These will not detain us long. 
Theirs were the beautiful childlike utterances just 
waking to speak of chivalry, and heroic deeds, and 
love, in song and music : the people had begun to 
get able to speak then. This sort of poetry became 
not much improved afterward, it was perfect from 
the first ; indeed, it could not have received any 
improvement from succeeding times, for shortly af- 
terward we observe the rise of a kind of feeling 
adverse to this spirit of harmony, which we shall 
by and by see get out into Protestantism. In the 
meantime all was one beautiful harmony and relig- 
ious unity. It is astonishing to see to what an ex- 
tent music and singing had already gone in all coun- 
tries. The Troubadours and Trouveres belonged to 
distinct races — the one Norman, with whom were 
joined our English forefathers; and the others, 
the Troubadours, were Provencal. This formed 
a division between them. Those from the North, or 



80 THE NIEBELUNGEN LIED 

Trouveres, sang of chivalrous histories, such as those 
of Charlemagne, of Arthur and the Round Table ; 
while those from the South sang of love, of chivalry, 
joustings, and so forth. From want of space I can- 
not go deeper just now into the subject, but I will 
just mention that the spirit of these two kinds of 
ballads have been curiously preserved to us by two 
poets, who can hardly be said to belong to the 
Troubadours. Petrarch may be said to have been 
the Troubadour of Italy, which country had prop- 
erly none else of its owd, though he came a century 
later than the true Troubadours. I refer to his great 
genius in sonnets and love singing. In him was a 
refined spirit of the Troubadour poetry ; doubtless 
it had many faults, but there it is in its more com- 
plete shape, as it lay in the melodious mind of Pe- 
trarch. This kind of song was cultivated even by 
kings and princes, such as Richard Cceur de Lion 
and Barbarossa. 

The other production to which I have alluded, of 
the Troubadour school, is better known by the name 
of the Niebehmgen Lied. This is properly Trou- 
vere. The probable date of this poem is the twelfth 
century ; it is by far the finest poem connected with 
the Middle Ages, down to Dante. It is of the old 
heroic German spirit, and sounds true as steel. It 
commemorates the adventures of the early Chiefs, 
of Siegfried and King Attila, and of the whole nation 
from their emigrations downward, all shadowed out 



PERMANENCE OF GOOD 81 

there. It is of the first rate, not perhaps evincing a 
shining genius, but far better than that, the simple, 
noble, manly character of its age, full of religion, 
mercy, and valor ! It was discovered about sixty 
years ago, but became generally known only forty 
years after that. I advise any of my friends who 
know German to make this poem their study ; a 
modern German translation of it has been published, 
but the language of the original is not much older 
to the German scholar than Chaucer is to us, and it 
is by far the finest poem we have of that period. 

We must now quit this general investigation of 
the Middle Ages, but I must, in the last place, remark 
that we must not suppose because the spirit of those 
ages did not speak much it has been lost, or ever 
could have been lost. It is not so ordered. There 
is no good action man can do that is not summoned 
up in time to come, and kept up there. We lose, 
indeed, much of the inconsistencies and contradic- 
tions of the times in the lapse of ages. But this 
again is precisely what we observe of rude natural 
voices, heard singing in the distance. Musicians say 
that there is nothing so strikingly impressive as to 
hear a psalm, for instance, sung by untaught voices 
in the mountains ; many inaccuracies, no doubt, 
there are in the performance, but in the distance all 
is true and bright, because all false notes destroy 
one another, and are absorbed in the air before they 
reach us, and only the true notes come to us. So 
G 



82 ACTIONS INDESTEUCTIBLE 

in the Middle Ages we only get the heroic essence of 
the whole. Actions only will be found to have been 
preserved when writers are forgotten. Homer will 
one day be swallowed up in time, and so will all 
the greatest writers that have ever lived, and com- 
paratively this is very little matter. But actions will 
not be destroyed, their influence must live ; good or 
bad they will live throughout eternity, for the weal 
or woe of the doer ! In particular, the good actions 
will flow on, in the course of time unseen perhaps, 
but just as a river of water flowing underground, 
hidden in general, but at intervals breaking out to 
the surface in many a well for the refreshment of 



men 



In our next lecture we shall come to Dante. 



LECTUKE V. 

Maij lUh 

SECOND PERIOD— Continued 

Dante— The Italians— Catholicism— Purgatory. 

We are now arrived at that point of history when 
Europe becomes divided ; its great stem branches 
off into different nations, one nation forming itself 
after another. Each nation of modern Europe dis- 
tinguishes itself in some measure from all other na- 
tions. The language is the peculiar product of 
each nation, containing something of its own not 
supplied from the others ; the function so appointed 
to be done by it, and the genius of it, everything 
belonging to it, characterizes each nation. We 
shall take them in their order. 

The first nation which possesses a claim on our 
solicitude is the Italian. It was the latest nation of 
those overrun by the barbarians which fashioned it- 
self into something of an articulate result. It has 
much distinguished itself in Europe, in ancient, as 
well as in modern times. It was the first that was 
notable in literature, in the exposition of opinions, 



84 LOMBARDS AND OUISCARDS 

in arts, in all the products of the human intellect. 
It is also important from being connected with that 
characteristic of the Middle Ages, the religious feel- 
ing then prevalent. It was the latest settled, and 
the first notable ; it was the last modern nation 
where the tumult of the northern emigrations sub- 
sided. The Lombards conquered Italy in the sixth 
century ; they were the latest of the German tribes 
that left their native seat. Paul Diaconus wrote 
their history. The Lombards, or Longobardi (Long- 
beards), were a brave, gifted, excellent nation ; they 
ruled in Italy for 150 years, after which time it split 
itself into a number of small principalities and 
towns, and so it has unhappily continued ever since. 
The next memorable event is the conquest of the 
South of Italy by the Guiscards, in the eleventh 
century, some two or three centuries after the final 
decay of the Lombard power. They were the sons 
of Tancred de Hauteville, the most impetuous fight- 
ers Italy ever had to encounter. The part where 
they settled was that which was remarked to have 
been once colonized by Greeks, Magna Grsecia, 
where to this day many Greek usages are still pre- 
served. Part of it is now called Naples (Neapolis, 
new town). The Saracens had gained a footing 
there, and to dislodge them the Prince of Apulia 
sent for Guiscard. He and his brother, who was 
called Iron Arm, came over and eventually repelled 
the Saracens. It was a great thing to do : it was 



ITALY IN THE MIDDLE AGES 85 

not much more than 100 years after these Normans 
(Northmen) had emerged from the condition of wild 
pirates, and settled in France, which was also about 
100 years before the time of William the Conqueror. 
It was a great feat. Naples was rendered a depend- 
ency of Northern Europe, and has remained so ever 
since. 

If it had not been for the third memorable cir- 
cumstance respecting Italy, the existence in it of 
the Pope, an event not sudden but gradual (1077 
was the culminating age of this political power), the 
Guiscards would have conquered all Italy. But 
the Pope had by this time got settled, and had ter- 
ritories of his own. He did not choose to permit 
the Guiscards to make further encroachments ; ac- 
cordingly, he interdicted their progress, and thus 
doomed Italy to be forever divided, and politically 
speaking, entirely paralyzed. If the Pope or the 
Guiscards, no matter which, had got ground through- 
out Italy, the result would have been very happy 
for her, but it w T as not her lot. Lingering still 
there in Italy, we observe that she occupies very 
little place in Europe ; but Italy has a peculiar 
character, and though Italians complain that their 
country has not held that influence in modern 
Europe to which, from her position aud resources, 
she is entitled, still I do not think that we should 
say that her part has not been a great one. In one 
respect it has been much greater than that of any 



86 DANTE 

other nation. She has produced a far greater num- 
ber of great men, distinguished in art, thinking, 
conduct, and everywhere in the departments of in- 
tellect. Dante, Raphael, Michael Angelo, among 
others, are hardly to be paralleled, in the respective 
department of each of these. In other departments 
again, there are Columbus, Spinola, and Galileo. 
And, after all, the great thing which any nation can 
do is to produce great men. It is thus only that it 
distinguishes itself in reality, and this distinction 
lasts longer than any other. A battle would be a 
comparatively trivial and poor thing ! 

In our limits it is impossible to attempt the de- 
lineation of the Italian people ; but in every people 
there is to be found some one great product of in- 
tellect, and when we shall have explained the sig- 
nificance of that one, we shall not fail to understand 
all the rest. In this instance we shall take Dante, 
one of the greatest men that ever lived ; perhaps 
the very greatest of Italians, certainly one of the 
greatest. The Divina Commedia is Dante's work. 
He was from Florence, a town of all others fertile in 
great men ; he was born in 1265. Florence had al- 
ready come into note 200 years before that ; it was 
first founded by Sylla. In the Middle Ages it 
played a great part, and it was there that Dante 
was born. His family was one of the greatest in 
Florence, that of Durante Alighieri (Durante since 
corrupted to Dante). He was well educated. We 



GUELPHS AND GHIBELLINES 87 

hear mention made of the schoolmaster who taught 
him grammar, and other great men of the day who 
had to do with him in different branches of educa- 
tion. He was much occupied in public employ- 
ments in his native town. Twice he was engaged 
in battle, on one occasion with the Kepublic of 
Pisa, and he was employed in fourteen embassies. 
It was in his twenty-fifth year that he first fought 
for Florence — in the battle of Arezzo, I think ; and 
finally he became Prior or chief magistrate of Flo- 
rence. 

We can make nothing of those obscure quarrels. 
They have no interest for us — those quarrels of the 
Guelphs and Ghibellines. We saw the foundation 
of all that in the quarrel of Hildebrand with the 
Emperor. Year after year it went on, generation 
after generation. The people that favored the Pope 
were called Guelphs ; those who favored the Em- 
peror, Ghibellines. The Guelphs were German 
princes. The Ghibellines were so named from 
Weiblin, a town of the Hohenstaufen, near Weins- 
berg. Their real names were Welf and Weiblin. 
Weiblin was made by the Italians into Ghibelline. 
The Guelphs were the ancestors of the house of 
Brunswick, the family on the throne of these realms. 
I say that we can make nothing out of these quar- 
rels, except that in every town of Italy party hatred 
prevailed violently, and each faction directed its ut- 
most endeavors to supplant the other. 



88 MISFORTUNES OF DANTE 

Dante favored the side of the Emperor. There 
being a very small number of families in Florence, 
party hatred was proportionally more violent. Ban- 
ishments of the highest personages were quite com- 
mon there, and were employed as often as one party 
was trodden down by its enemies. Dante accord- 
ingly, being then absent upon some embassy, was 
banished by his enemies. He was then in his thirty- 
fifth year. He afterward made some attempt, with 
others of his friends, to get back to Florence, and 
made an attack by arms upon the city, which, prov- 
ing unsuccessful, so exasperated the citizens that 
nothing could appease them. Dante was then as 
good as confiscated ; he had been fined before that. 
There is still to be seen an act of that time in the 
archives of Florence, charging all magistrates to 
burn Dante alive when he should be taken, such 
violent hatred had they conceived against him! 
Dante was afterward reduced to wander up and 
down Italy, a broken man ! His way of life is diffi- 
cult to conceive of, with so violent a mind as his, 
with such deep feelings, whether sad or joyful. 
Henceforth he had sorrow for his portion. It is 
very mournful to think of, but, at the same time, 
the work he had to do could not have been done so 
well had his lot been less unhappy. He was ever a 
serious man, always meditating on some religious or 
moral subject. After his misfortunes, besides, there 
was no hope extant for him ; he tells us that he had 



THE DIVINA COMMEDIA 89 

left everything he could love. This gave hiiri double 
and treble earnestness of character. The world was 
now all over for him ; he looked now only to the 
great kingdom of eternity ! It has been disputed 
whether he had begun the Divina Commedia before 
he left Florence. He had, at all events, not written 
much of it. He completed it in his exile, that he 
might secure to himself powerful friends, who could 
shelter him ; and he therefore got it published, to 
be descanted on now 500 years after that, and to 
continue to be so for 1,000 years and more to come ! 
There are few things that exist worth comparing 
to it. iEschylus, Dante, Shakespeare — one really 
cannot add another greater name to these ! Theirs 
were the utterances out of the great heart of nat- 
ure, sincere outpourings of the mind of man ! His 
Divina Commedia assumes at first the form of a 
vision, though it soon loses it as he proceeds. In- 
deed, he nowhere expressly announces it at all, 
though he begins suddenly, as if it were a vision. 
The three great kingdoms of Eternity are the sub- 
ject of the poem : Hell, the place of final expiation 
of guilt, where a stern, inexorable justice reigns 
without pity, charged to inflict punishments for in- 
fraction of the laws of the Most High ; Purgatory, 
a place where the sin of man is, under certain con- 
ditions, cleansed away ; and Paradise, where the 
soul enjoys felicity forever ! This was the greatest 
idea that we have ever yet had — the experience of 



90 CHARACTER OF THE POEM 

entering into the soul of man, more full of grandeur 
than any other of the elements, and it fell to the lot 
of one who was singularly appropriated by his way 
of life for the task. He was a man full of sorrows, 
a man of woe ; by nature of a serious turn of mind, 
and rendered doubly and trebly so by his way of 
life. Accordingly, I think that when all records of 
Catholicism shall have passed away ; when the Vati- 
can shall have crumbled into dust, and St. Peter's 
and Strasburg Minster be no more ; for thousands 
of years to come Catholicism will survive in this 
sublime relic of antiquity ! 

In seeking the character of Dante's poem, we 
shall admire first that grand natural, moral depth, 
that nobleness of heart, that grandeur of soul which 
distinguish him. Great in all directions, in his 
wrath, his scorn, his pity. Great above all in his 
sorrow ! That is a fine thing which he says of those 
in a state of despair, "They have not the Hope to 
die " — " Non hanno speranza di morte ! " "What an 
idea that is in Dante's mind there of death. To 
most persons death is the dreaded being, the king 
of terrors, but to Dante to be imprisoned forever in 
a miserable complexity, without hope of release, is 
the most terrible of things ! Indeed, I believe, not- 
withstanding the horror of death, no human creat- 
ure but would find it to be the most dreadful doom 
not to be suffered to die, though he should be 
decreed to enjoy all youth and bloom immortally ! 



91 



For there is a boundlessness, an endless longing in 
the breast, which aspires to another world than this. 
That, too, is a striking passage where he says of 
certain individuals that they are hateful to God, 
and to the enemies of God. There was a deep feel- 
ing in Dante of the enormity of that moral base- 
ness, such as had never before gone into the mind 
of any man. These of whom he speaks were a kind 
of trimmers ; men that had not even the merit to 
join with the devil. He adds : " Non ragioniam di 
lor, ma guarda e passa ! " — "Let us say nothing of 
them, but look and pass ! " The central quality of 
Dante was greatness of heart ; from this all the 
others flowed as from a natural source. This must 
exist in every man that would be great ; it is impos- 
sible for him to do anything good without it, and 
by his success we may trace, in every writer, his 
magnanimity and his pusillanimity. In Dante there 
was the greatness of simplicity, for one thing. All 
things are to be anticipated from the nobleness 
of his moral opinions. Logically speaking, again, 
Dante had one of the finest understandings, re- 
markable in all matters of reason ; as, for instance, 
in his reflections on fortune, free-will, and the nat- 
ure of sin. He was an original, quick, far-seeing 
man, possessing a deep insight into all matters, and 
this, combined with the other quality which we no- 
ticed, his greatness of heart, constitutes the princi- 
pal charm in Dante. In the third place, his poem 



92 DANTE AND MILTON 

was so musical that it got up to the length of sing- 
ing itself, his soul was in it ; and when we read 
there is a tune which hurries itself along. These 
qualities, a great heart, insight, and song, are the 
stamp of a genuine poem at all times. They will 
not be peculiar to any one age, but will be natural 
in all ages. For, as I observed, it is the utterance 
of the heart of life itself, and all earnest men, of 
whatever age, will there behold as in a mirror the 
image of their own convexed beam, and will be 
grateful to the poet for the brotherhood to him in 
which they stand. Then as to simplicity, there is 
in the poem throughout that noble character, inso- 
much that one would almost suppose that there is 
nothing great there. For he remains intent upon 
the delineation of his subject, never guilty of bom- 
bastic inflation, and does not seem to think that he 
is doing anything very remarkable. Herein he is 
very different from Milton. Milton, with all his 
genius, was very inferior to Dante, he has made 
his angels large, huge, distorted beings. He has 
sketched vividly his scenes of heaven and hell, and 
his faculty is certainly great ; but I say that Dante's 
task was the great thing to do. He has opened the 
deep, unfathomable oasis of woe that lay in the soul 
of man ; he has opened the living fountains of hope, 
also of penitence ! And this I say is far greater 
than towering as high as Teneriffe, or twice as 
high ! 



THE INFERNO 93 

In his delineations he has a most beautiful sharp 
grace, the quickest and clearest intellect. It is just 
that honesty with which his mind was set upon his 
subject, that carries it out. Take, for instance, the 
scene of the monster Geryon, with Virgil and 
Dante, where he describes how he landed with them 
in the eighth circle. He says that Geryon was like 
a falcon in quest of prey, hovering without seeing 
either the lure or the game. When the falconer 
cries, " Oiml tu call " (" Come down ! "), he descends, 
wheeling round and round, and sits at a distance 
disdainful and disobedient. Just so was Geryon. 
And then he bolted up like an arrow out of the 
bow. There are not above a dozen words in this 
picture, but it is one that will last forever ! 

So also his description of the city of Dis, to which 
Virgil carries him, possesses a beautiful simplicity 
and honesty. " The light was so dim that the peo- 
ple could hardly see, and they winked at him, just 
as people wink their eyes under the new moon," or 
as an old tailor winks threading his needle, when 
his eyes are not good. There is a contrast between 
his subject and this quaint similitude that has a 
beautiful effect. It brings one home to the subject ; 
there is much reality in this similitude. So his de- 
scription of the place they were in. Flakes of fire 
came down like snow, falling on the skin of the peo- 
ple, and burning them black ! Among these he 
sees his old schoolmaster who taught him grammar, 



94 FRANCESCA 

he winks at him in the manner described, but he is 
so burnt that Dante can hardly recognize him. 

There are many of his greatest qualities in the 
celebrated passage about Francesca, whom he finds 
in the circle of Inferno appropriated to those who 
had erred in love. I many times say I know no- 
where of a more striking passage ; if anyone would 
select a passage characteristic of a great man, let 
him study that. It is as tender as the voice of 
mothers, full of the gentlest pity, though there is 
much stern tragedy in it. It is very touching. In 
a place without light, which groaned like a stormy 
sea, he sees two shadows which he wishes to speak 
to, and they come to him. He compares them to 
doves whose wings are open and not fluttering. 
Francesca, one of these, utters her complaint, which 
does not occupy twenty lines, though it is such an 
one that a man may write a thousand lines about it, 
and not do ill. It contains beautiful touches of 
human weakness. She feels that stern justice en- 
circles her all around. " Oh, living creature," she 
says, "who hast come so kindly to visit us, if the 
Creator of the World " (poor Francesca ! she knew 
that she had sinned against His inexorable justice) 
"were our friend, we would pray Him for thy 
peace ! " Love, which soon teaches itself to a gen- 
tle heart, inspired her Paolo (beautiful womanly 
feeling that). " Love forbids that the person loved 
shall not love in return." And so she loved Paolo. 



UGOLINO 90 

" Caina awaits him who destroyed our life," she 
adds with female vehemence. Then, in three lines, 
she tells the story how they fell in love. " We read 
one day of Launcelot, how love possessed him ; we 
were alone, we regarded one another ; when we 
read of that laughing kiss, he, trembling, kissed 
me ! That day," she adds, " we read no further ! " 

The whole is beautiful, like a clear, piping voice 
heard in the middle of a whirlwind : it is so sweet, 
and gentle, and good ! 

Then the hunger power of Ugolino. This, how- 
ever, is a much more brutal thing than the punish- 
ment of Francesca. But the story of Francesca is 
all a truth. He says that he knew her father ; her 
history becomes a kind of conceru in the mind of 
Dante, and when he hears her relate it he falls as a 
dead body falls. This, too, is an answer to a criti- 
cism against Dante, and a paltry criticism it is. 
Some have regarded the poem as a kind of satire 
upon his enemies, on whom he revenged himself by 
putting them into hell. Now, nothing is more un- 
worthy of Dante than such a theory. If he had 
been of such an ignoble nature, he never could 
have written the Divina Gommedia. It was written 
in the purest spirit of justice. Thus he pitied poor 
Francesca, and would not have willingly placed her 
in that torment ; but it was the justice of God's law 
that doomed her there ! 

How beautiful is his description of the coming 



96 FARINATA 

eve, the hour when sorrow awakens in the hearts of 
sailors who have left their land (sguilla di lontano), 
the dying day. No one ever quitted home and 
loved ones whose heart does not respond to that ! 

"We must not omit Farinata, the beautiful illustra- 
tion of a character much found in Dante. He is 
confined in the black dome where the heretics 
dwell. In the same tomb is Cavalcante de' Caval- 
canti, father of one of Dante's most loved friends. 
The description is striking of the sarcophaguses in 
which these people are enclosed, " more or less 
heated " (there is nothing in Teneriffe like that) ; 
the lids are to be kept open till the last day, and 
are then to be sealed down forever. He hears 
Dante speaking in the Tuscan dialect, and he ac- 
costs him. He is a man of great haughtiness (gran 
dispitto, sdegnoso). This spirit of defiance of suffer- 
ing, so remarkable in iEschylus, occurs two or 
three times in Dante. Farinata asks him, What 
news of Florence ? For in all his long exile Dante 
himself thinks continually of Florence, which he 
loves so well, and he makes even those in torment 
anxious after what is doing in Florence. Then 
Cavalcanti asks Dante why is he there, and not his 
son. Where is he ? And Dante replies that per- 
haps he had disdain for Virgil. Had? Cavalcanti 
asks (Ebbe) ; does he not live then ? And, as Dante 
pauses a little without replying, he plunges down, 
and Dante sees him no more ! 



DANTE AND FLORENCE 97 

These sudden and abrupt motions are frequent in 
Dante. He is, indeed, full of what I can call mili- 
tary movements ; many of his gestures are ex- 
tremely significant. In another place three men 
" looked at one another, like men that believed." 
In these words one sees it all, as it seemed to 
Dante ! This is a feature I don't know how to 
name well, but it is very remarkable in Dante. 
Those passages are very striking where he alludes 
to his own sad fortunes. There is in them a wild 
sorrow, a savage tone of truth, a breaking heart ; 
the hatred of Florence, and with it the love of Flor- 
ence ! In one place, " Rejoice, O Florence, that 
thou art so famous in hell ! " In another place he 
calls her hell-guided. His old schoolmaster tells 
him : "If thou follow thy star, thou canst not miss 
a happy harbor." That was just it. That star oc- 
casionally shone on him from the blue eternal 
depths, and he felt he was doing something good ; 
but he soon lost it again as he fell back into the 
trough of the sea, and had to journey on as before. 
And when his ancestor predicts his banishment, 
there is the wild sincerity again. He must leave 
every delightful thing ; he must learn to dwell on 
the stairs of another man. Bitter ! bitter ! Poor 
exile, none but scoundrelly persons to associate 
with ! There are traces here and there of a heart 
one would always wish to see in man. He is not 
altogether, therefore, an unconscious man like 



98 IL PURGATORIO 

Shakespeare, but more morbid and narrower. 
Though he does not attempt to compute it, he 
seems to feel merely the conviction, the humble 
hope, that he shall get to heaven in the end ! 

A notable passage that on fame ! No man, if he 
were Alexander the Great, if he were Dante, if he 
were all men put together, could get for himself 
eternal fame ! He feels that, too. Fame is not of 
any particular moment to him. That contradiction 
between the greatness of his mind and his humble 
attachment to Florence is difficult of utterance, and 
it seems as if the spirit of the man were hampered 
with the insufficient dialects this world imposes 
upon him. 

The "Inferno" has become of late times mainly 
the favorite of the three divisions of Dante's great 
poem. It has harmonized well with the taste of 
the last thirty or forty years, in which Europe has 
seemed to covet more a violence of emotion and a 
strength of convulsion than almost any other quality. 
It is no doubt a great thing ; but to my mind the 
" Purgatorio " is excellent also, and I question even 
whether it is not a better and a greater thing on the 
whole. It is very beautiful to see them get up into 
that black, great mountain in the western ocean, 
where Columbus had not yet been. To trace giro 
after giro, the purification of souls is beautiful ex- 
ceedingly ; the sinners' repentance, the humble hope, 
the peace and joy that is in them. 



99 



There is no book so moral as this, the very essence 
of Christian morality ! Men have, of course, ceased 
to believe these things — that mountain rising up in 
the ocean, or that Male-bolge, with its black gulfs. 
But still men of any knowledge at all must believe 
that there exists the inexorable justice of God, and 
that penitence is the great thing here for man. For 
life is but a series of errors, made good again by 
repentance ; and the sacredness of that doctrine 
is asserted in Dante in a manner more moral than 
anywhere else. Any other doctrine is with him 
comparatively not worth affirming or denying. Very 
touching is that gentle patience, that unspeakable 
thankfulness with which the souls expect their 
release after thousands of years. Cato is keeping 
the gate. That is a beautiful dawn of morning. 
The dawn drove away the darkness westward, with 
a quivering of the sea on the horizon. 

" Si clie di lontano 
Conobbi al treniolar della marina." 

He seems to seize the word for it. Anybody who 
has seen the sun rise at sea will recognize it. The 
internal feeling of the " Pnrgatorio " keeps pace with 
that. One man says: "Tell my Giovanna that I 
think her mother does not love me now " — that she 
has laid aside her weeds ! The parable with which 
he concludes his lament is as beautiful as it can be. 
Then, too, the relation he stands in to Virgil and 



100 BEATEICE 

Beatrice ; his loyalty, faith, and kindly feeling for 
Virgil's nobleness. Loyalty, we remarked, was the 
essence of the Middle Ages. Virgil was never angry 
with him but once, when Dante seems to pay too 
much attention to two falsifiers quarrelling. "A 
little more," he says, " and I would quarrel with 
thee." Dante owns himself in the wrong, and Vir- 
gil then tells him it is not proper to listen to such 
things. Beatrice was actually a beautiful little girl, 
whom he had seen in his boyhood at a ball. She 
was a young child, nine years old when he was ten. 
He had never heard her speak but once, when she 
was talking to some one at the corner of the street. 
She was cinctured with a garland of olive, and ap- 
peared " mirce pulchritudinis" Such was the mood 
of beauty, he says, in which her aspect placed him, 
that that night, when he fell asleep, he dreamed 
of her. This was at nine o'clock, for though it 
was many years after he remembered it quite well. 
They had met but little, but he seemed to know 
that she loved him, as he her. She married another 
afterwards, but not willingly. When all else is dark 
with misery for him, this is the only recollection 
that is beautiful, for nothing had occurred to render 
it disagreeable to him, and his whole soul flies to it. 
Providence sent an angel always to interfere when 
the worst came. In Paradise, when Virgil vanishes 
and he sees Beatrice, by this time purified from 
mortal stain, how deep is the expression of his joy ! 



THE MOTHER OF BEATRICE 101 

How heavily the love he bore her weighed upon his 
heart ! The mother of Beatrice treated him with 
much seeming harshness (barbarezza), wasting his 
very life away with severity ; but it was all through 
her apprehension that if she were to give vent to her 
love for him she should kill him ; it would be too 
much for him. But he reads in her eye all the while 
her deep affection ; in the flush of joy with which she 
regards him, his successes, and good actions. One 
can well understand, in this point of view, what the 
Germans say of the three parts of the Divina Comme- 
dia. The first is the architectural, plastic part, as of 
statuary ; the second is the pictorial ; the third is 
the musical, the melting into song. 

But I can afford no more time to speak of Dante. 
My friends must endeavor to supply the omissions 
I have been obliged to make, and to expand what 
I have said over his whole poem. We must quit 
Italy and Dante altogether with these imperfect re- 
marks. 



LECTUEE VI. 

May 18th 

SECOND PEKIOD— Continued 

The Spaniards— Chiv alky— Greatness of the Span- 
ish Nation— Cervantes, his Life, his Book — 
Lope— Calderon — Protestantism and the Dutch 
War. 

In our last lecture we saw the remarkable phenom- 
enon of one great mind making of himself, as it 
were, the spokesman of his age, and speaking with 
such an earnestness and depth that he has become 
one of the voices of mankind itself, making his voice 
to be heard in all ages, for he was filled in every 
fibre of his mind with that principle, belief in the 
Catholic Church : this was the model by which all 
things became satisfactorily arranged for him in his 
mind. "VVe must now leave that altogether abruptly, 
and come to the next great phenomenon in this 
history, a new nation, new products in the human 
mind. I allude to Cervantes and chivalry. But 
before I come to that I may observe that Dante's 
way of thinking was one which from its very nature 



WIDENING OF KNOWLEDGE 103 

could not long contiDue ; indeed, it is not given to 
man that any of his works should long continue, of 
the works of his mind, any more than the things 
which he makes with his hand. But there was 
something in the very nature of Dante's way of 
thinking which made it very natural that it should 
have become generally altered even in the next gen- 
eration. Dante's son even must have lived in an in- 
creased horizon of knowledge, which the theory of 
Dante could no longer fit ; as, for example, man had 
then sailed to the Western Ocean, and had found 
that the Mountain of Purgatory was not there at all. 
Indeed, if we look at it, we shall find that every man 
is first a learner, an apprentice, and then a work- 
man, who at first schemes out to himself such 
knowledge as his fathers teach him into quite a 
familiar theory ; but the first researches will further 
widen his circle of knowledge, and he will have cer- 
tain misgivings as to the theory, the creed I may 
call it, of the universe which he has already adopted, 
certain suspicions in his own mind that there are 
inconsistencies and contradictions in his theory not 
at all satisfactory, and this will go on increasing 
until this theory alters itself, shapes itself to them. 

In Italy the same Catholic Church, which was 
the mother of the mind of Dante, inspiring it with 
every feeling and thought that was there, afterwards 
condemned Galileo to renounce what he knew to be 
true because it was at that time supposed to be 



104 PROGRESS INEVITABLE 

contrary to the tenets the Church held on the sub- 
ject, forcing him to be either the martyr of the In- 
quisition or to deny the truth. Indeed, before that, 
Europe had split itself into all kinds of confusions 
and contradictions without end, in which we are 
still enveloped. This, in short, is the foundation 
and essence of the progress of the human mind, 
which, in spite of the exaggerations and the mis- 
representations which have been made of it, is really 
the inevitable law for man, to go on, and to continue 
to widen his investigations for thousands of years, or 
even for millions, for there is no limit to it ! Any 
theory of Nature is, at most, temporary ; but, on the 
other hand, all theories contain something within 
them which is perennial. In Dante that was belief, 
the communion which the heart of hearts can hold 
with Nature. The human soul, in fact, develops 
itself into all sorts of opinions, doctrines which go 
on nearer and nearer to the truth. All theories ap- 
proximate more or less to the great Theor}*, which 
remains itself always unknown, and in that propor- 
tion contain something which must live. There- 
fore, whatever opinion we may form of his doc- 
trines, we do not dissent from Dante's piety, that 
will always be admired. There is no nation, too, 
without progress. Some people say that the Chinese 
are without it ; perhaps they may change less rapid- 
ly than other nations, but they must change. It 
appears to me to be inevitably necessary. Every 



GROWTH OF UNIVERSITIES 105 

philosophy that exists is destined to be embraced, 
melted down as it were, into some larger philosophy, 
which, too, will have to suffer the same some day. 

Cervantes lived more than two centuries after 
Dante ; though we select him as the most remark- 
able of his age there were, no doubt, before him 
many other people very valuable in influencing the 
human mind. All people, indeed, from Charle- 
magne's time, had already made rapid advances in 
all departments of culture. We may here remark 
one or two symptoms of that restless effort after 
advancement then in action everywhere in Europe. 
First there was the institution of universities, which 
was long before Dante. The University of Paris 
had come into decided note in the time of Dante. 
There is a tradition that Dante himself was at it, as 
there is a vague tradition that he was at Oxford too, 
but this last is very doubtful. These universities 
of Europe grew up in a very obscure manner, not 
noted at first, but rising up quite naturally and 
spontaneously. Some great teacher, such as Abe- 
lard, would get into repute with those who were 
eagerly desirous of learning, and there would be no 
other way of learning his knowledge except to gather 
round him and hear him expound what knowledge 
he had in his own department. When any other 
teacher would be desirous of displaying his own 
branch of acquirements he would naturally estab- 
lish himself in the neighborhood of the first one, 



106 PRINTING 

and so these many teachers would begin to gather 
themselves together till their community should be- 
come known generally, and more young men would 
resort to them, until finally the king, as did the 
King of France, would take notice of them, form 
them into a corporation, endow them with lands, 
and style the establishment university — the place of 
a complete, settled course of instruction. It was 
about the ninth century that Paris was first recog- 
nized as an university, others soon followed, and the 
system so founded continues down to our times. 
One cause may be assigned for their existence, the 
want of books. 

Books at that period were not easily to be pro- 
cured, and except by means of lecturing none could 
learn what knowledge there was then to be attained. 
But this want became supplied by another great 
symptom of European improvement, the invention of 
the art of printing in the century after Dante, that 
is to say, the end of the fifteenth and beginning of 
the sixteenth centuries. There are many contro- 
versies as to where it was invented, but it is not 
necessary to examine them here. Faust brought it 
into full use about the year 1450. It is one very 
great fact productive of important results for man- 
kind, and one which has not clearly unfolded itself 
yet ; but it was by no means a wonderful invention, 
it was quite a corollary from another great art, writ- 
ing, a much more wonderful achievement, yet com- 



GUNPOWDER 107 

paratively insignificant too, compared with that ad- 
mirable gift of speech, that power which man has 
of expressing his meaning by certain sounds ! 

Another symptom of the change of habits in Eu- 
rope is the invention of gunpowder, which took 
place prior to the century before the invention of 
printing, two centuries we may say ; but the time 
of this invention is not known either ; also some at- 
tribute it to Friar Bacon, and others to Swartz. It 
does not seem a very beneficent invention this, de- 
signed for the destruction of man ; but yet, on the 
whole, it has had immense consequences of the bene- 
ficial sort, for, like all other things in military art, it 
softens the miseries of war, and, we may add, with- 
out entering into any wide conclusions about it, it 
is really the setting of the soul of man above the 
body of man, since it has reduced physical strength 
all to nothing in the contests between man and man, 
insomuch that, give the weakest woman a pistol, and 
she instantly becomes a Goliath with that pistol in 
her hand ! A great invention that ; so busy were 
these ages in their efforts after progress ! 

We shall now proceed to look at the Spaniards, 
and the results they realized for themselves in this 
world of ours. The two great things which we have 
remarked in the Middle Ages — first, Christianity : 
the Catholic religion ; and next, loyalty — had main- 
ly the influence over Dante's works. That same 
spirit of loyalty obtained, however, a practical illus- 



108 AGE OF CHIVALRY 

tration of a striking character, which received the 
name of Chivalry. This, we may say, was the great 
product of the Spanish nation. It seems very ex- 
traordinary that Christianity, which is against war 
altogether, teaching men even not to resist violence, 
should, with its divine spirit, have penetrated even 
into war itself, making it in the highest degree no- 
ble and beneficial ; that that dark background which 
lies in every man, and which tells him that he can 
fight, and makes war at all times possible for man, 
that even this should have been penetrated with 
that spirit, and raised by it to an elevation, a noble- 
ness, a beauty quite distinguished from anything in 
the pagan world ! 

The age of chivalry has been the subject of all 
kinds of investigations, but writers have been able 
to find no physical origin for it. It seems to have 
been produced by the German spirit united to that 
of the Christian doctrine. Among the Germans 
courage in battle was greatly honored. According 
to Tacitus, when a young man aspired to manhood, 
he was solemnly led into the Public Assembly, there 
girt with a sword, and proclaimed a fighter and a 
man. 

This is very analogous to the ceremonies of 
knighthood, chivalry. This German quality, valor 
of character, combined with the Christian religion, 
as well as with another feature of the Germans, their 
reverence for women, which also became a feature 



THE SPANIARDS 109 

of chivalry. These two qualities of the German 
character became blended under the sanctifying in- 
fluence of Christianity, and the whole framed itself 
into a system of opinions of the most beneficial 
kind, tempering* the horrid madness of war, man 
meeting to kill man, and presenting a most beauti- 
ful glow of worth, very different from what war was 
in old times, where indeed there were always cer- 
tain laws of war (as what can be done without some 
law or other at any time), but there was none of that 
mercy, that noble self-denial, that fidelity to a man, 
and to the cause of that man, which we see in the 
Middle Ages ! 

In the next place, I may observe that probably 
the Spanish nation was the most fitted for this mat- 
ter, as it actually appears to have carried this mat- 
ter forward to a higher perfection than it attained 
anywhere else. The Spanish nation had made its 
appearance in European history more than two cen- 
turies before Christ, in the wars of the Carthagin- 
ians and Komans. They were remarkable for their 
tenacious valor. The Celt-iberian nation, the ori- 
gin of the rest of Spain, had always that character, 
and to this day they maintain it in Spain by the 
name of Basques, and on the other side of the 
Pyrenees by that of Gascons. In the barbarian in- 
vasions the}' at first became mixed with the Goths, 
and afterward with the Vandals, from whom they 
received their slight admixture of Northern blood ; 



110 THE CID 

and then with the Arabs. In modern times they 
maintained the nobleness which distinguished them 
in ancient times, and have often displayed a spirit 
equal to that they exhibited in the sieges of Sagun- 
tium aod Numantia, which lasted fourteen years, 
and the scenes of which are much analogous to the 
siege of Saragossa in our times : a striking instance 
which shows the character of nations to be wonder- 
fully tenacious. The Spaniards had less breadth of 
genius than the Italians, but they had, on the other 
hand, a lofty sustained enthusiasm in a higher de- 
gree than the Italians, with a tinge of what we call 
romance, a dash of Oriental exaggeration, and a 
tenacious vigor in prosecuting their objects. Of. 
less depth than the Germans, of less of that com- 
posed silent force, yet a great people, and of much 
knowledge, and at all times calculated to be distin- 
guished ; and it was this people that developed the 
thing we call chivalry : that system of noble deeds 
in war, and noble feelings. These sieges of Sagun- 
tium and Numantia, and the man Viriatus, a Span- 
ish or Portuguese shepherd, who withstood the 
whole force of the Romans for fourteen years — 
that same spirit which was in them showed itself 
early in modern Europe, in the Cid, for example — 
whose memory is still musical among the people. I 
am told that to this day they sing ballads about 
him. A book has been written about his history by 
Johannes von Midler, who really sees good reason to 



THE MOORS 111 

give credit to the popular ballads about bis advent- 
ures. You all know the famous version of it by 
Corneille. His real name was Ruy Diaz. He was 
the contemporary of William the Conqueror ; from 
the first a hard destiny was laid out for him. He 
had been betrothed to Lady Chimene, but their 
fathers disagreeing, the match was broken off; a 
contest ensued, in which his father was vanquished. 
For the purpose of vengeance, he fought and con- 
quered her father, merely from a sentiment of filial 
duty, not from interest ; all personal wishes were 
set at nought, and as to thoughts of personal ad- 
vantage, it was altogether the reverse. So when 
the King had employed him successfully against the 
Moors, he afterward rejected him altogether from 
his Court. He fought often against the Moors. (I 
may here mention that Cid is a Moorish name, and 
signifies master.) No doubt those contests against 
the Arabs tended very much to keep alive that spirit 
of chivalry. This people first landed in Spain in the 
eighth century, and very soon overran it, and even 
penetrated into France as far as Poitou, where they 
were met by Charles Martel, and driven back upon 
Spain. We may say that they made themselves mas- 
ters of all Spain. The Christian people took refuge 
in the mountains, and, issuing from thence, gradual- 
ly reconquered the country ; but that contest last- 
ed 800 years. Notwithstanding their hostility, we 
must confess the Moors did great things for Spain. 



112 MAHOMET 

They invented the decimal system of notation, the 
greatest boon the world perhaps ever got in that de- 
partment; also they gave us the words azimuth, 
nadir, zenith — in all sciences they effected great re- 
sults. They were the first who translated the Greek 
books ; and, in short, were the instructors of Europe 
in many respects. But in particular, we are to re- 
mark of them that they serve especially to illustrate 
what was said of the Middle Ages, and the effect of 
belief at that time. 

The nation, ever since the time of their probable 
founders (Hagar and Ishmael), had been a nation of 
great energy, but living alone in their deserts, and 
entirely obscure in that way of life, until Mahomet, 
the Prophet of Arabia, appeared. This was in the 
seventh century. I must say that I regard this man 
as no impostor at all, and I am glad to think so for 
the honor of our human nature, but, as an enthusi- 
astic man, who had by the powers of his own mind 
gained a flash of the truth, living a quiet simple 
life till the age of forty, then striking out into a new 
path altogether, deeply impressed with the heinous- 
ness of Arabian idolatry, and full of the great truth, 
that God was one ; in other respects a poor inferior 
mortal, full of sensuality, corruption, and ignorance, 
as he showed by the rewards he promised the Arabs 
when he spoke out his system to them. He got 
them, but with much difficulty, to believe that, and 
then within a century afterward they had spread 



CERVANTES 113 

themselves, like gunpowder ignited by a spark, 
across the Indies on the one hand, and on the other 
up as far as Poitou ! They made, besides, great 
proficiency in the arts, poetry, science, and were 
greatly superior in all these respects to any Euro- 
pean nation of the time. 

In Cervantes we see almost the first record of 
Spanish literature. Viriatus, the Cid, and the like 
men lived silent ; their works spoke for them, and 
it is singular that a poor obscure man should be the 
only voice which has reached us through so many 
ages of Spanish history, without which, too, we 
should never have so accurately known what was 
the tone of the Spanish soul. His life was not that 
of a scholar at all, but of a broken, active, hard man 
of action. He was of a decayed family of gentry of 
Ascalon, near Madrid ; his birth took place in 1547. 
Being placed at school, he soon distinguished him- 
self, insomuch that he was able to obtain an em- 
ployment under the Cardinal Aquaviva, who was 
then going to Rome ; but the great league being 
about that time formed between Rome, Spain, and 
Venice against the Turks, he resigned his post, and 
became a soldier, as did many young men and 
noblemen then, volunteering to serve in the fleet 
under Colonna and Don John of Austria. The bat- 
tle of Lepanto was the beginning of his hard expe- 
rience ; there his left arm was cut off b} r a Turkish 
scimitar. Returning home to Spain, though he had 
8 



114 CAPTIVITY IN BARBARY 

not quitted the army notwithstanding his wound, 
he was taken captive by a Barbary corsair, carried 
to Algiers, and there compelled to dig the ground 
in the service of the rude and cruel corsair, his 
master. Seven years he spent in slavery and the 
most grievous suffering ; but his cheerful and noble 
heart kept him up. He spent the whole of this 
time in devising means to get out of the place. 

In Don Quixote he has given us the story of a 
captive's adventures, distinctly resembling his own. 
Besides this, in a book upon Barbary, written by a 
Spanish priest in the same century, the author, 
Father Haydo, gives an account of Cervantes' cap- 
tivity and adventures, of his plans of escape ; that 
he and others lived in a cavern for six months, hop- 
ing to get away ; that he escaped death many times, 
and in particular on the occasion of his escape into 
the cavern, where he was detected ; that he was 
there very nearly killed, and would have been had 
not the Dey of Algiers consented to let him ransom 
himself for 500 crowns if he were able. His mother 
and sister and others then began to contribute tow- 
ard this amount, as it was too much for one of them 
to bear; and it is very touching to see how one 
would give fifty crowns, and another perhaps not so 
much, and so on. But the Society of Mercy was 
then active in ransoming Christian slaves, and, 
among others, they were induced to ransom Cer- 
vantes. He was then in his thirty-fourth year. He 



RANSOMED BUT POOR 115 

married shortly after ; but he made at that time do 
progress in literature. He was taken up by some 
of his kindred about Seville, who were merchants 
there, and in their employment he occupied himself 
by travelling up and down Spain, which, by these 
means, he came to know accurately, and could not 
have known so well in any other way. 

He finally came to Valladolid to settle, but it is 
not known why he did so. There is yet a curious 
document in the archives of Valladolid, which shows 
his humble condition and the small estimation in 
which he was then held. A man, it appears from 
this record, was one night murdered in front of 
Cervantes' house. Cervantes ran out to give assist- 
ance upon hearing the cry, but, being found with 
the corpse, he was taken up by the police, and car- 
ried away from his family before the magistrates. 
His house was so mean, where he and his family 
lived on the fourth floor, and their appearance was 
so haggard and squalid, that he was suspected of 
being one of the worst characters in the place. Of 
course he was cleared of this charge ; but it is a 
striking record of the state of misery to which he 
was then reduced. Yet he was always, in spite of 
all this, as cheerful as any man could be ; and the 
best proof of this is that tbat very year, some say 
before that, he produced the first part of Don Quix- 
ote, being then in his fifty-fourth year, already in 
old age. The last part appeared ten years after 



116 DON QUIXOTE 

that, in the year before he died. It has been often 
remarked that he died on the same day that Shake- 
sj:>eare died. Some grandees and others gave him 
in his latter years some slight help, the Duke of 
Lemos, for example, for which he was abundantly 
grateful to them ; but he was never lifted at any 
time above the state of poverty and dependence, 
and was always, as he said himself, the " poorest of 
Spanish poets." Three or four days, or perhaps 
two weeks, before his death, he writes to his patron, 
the Duke of Lemos, expressing warmly his grati- 
tude for his favors to him, and taking leave of him, 
as he says, with his " foot in the stirrup." His had 
been a hard condition, full of privations and evils, 
necessity and difficulty. In none of his literary 
things he seems to prosper but Don Quixote, which, 
indeed, is a most admirable work ; and it really 
seems as if Fortune, in return for her many unkind- 
nesses, had given him this high gift — the power of 
speaking out the spirit that was in him in a way 
that should rank him among the great voices of the 
world. 

Don Quixote is the very reverse of the Commedia 
of Dante ; but in one respect it is analogous to it. 
Like it, it is the free utterance of the heart of man 
and nature. At the outset Cervantes seems to have 
contemplated not much more than a satire on 
chivalry — a burlesque. But, as he proceeds, the 
spirit soon grows on him. One may say that in his 



MEANING OF DON QUIXOTE 117 

Don Quixote he portrays his own character, repre- 
senting himself with good-natured irony, mistaking 
the illusions of his own heart for realities ; but he 
proceeds ever more and more harmoniously. The 
first time where he appears to have gone deeply into 
his subject is the scene with the goatherds, where 
Don Quixote breaks out into an eulogy on the 
Golden Age, full of the finest poetry, although 
strangely introduced in the middle of the mockery 
which appears before. Throughout^ the delineation 
of the Don's character and the incidents of the 
story, there is the vesture of mockery, parody, with 
a seam of poetry shining through all ; and above 
all we see the good - humored cheerfulness of the 
author, in the middle of his unfortunate destiny ; 
never provoked with it, no atrabiliar quality ever 
obtained an}' mastery in his mind ! It was written 
in satire of the romances of chivalry ; but it is the 
only record we have of many of them, and it is 
questionable whether any of those romances would 
have lasted till now if not noticed there. We have 
no time at all to dwell upon its merits. There is 
one thing, however, we should remark — that all the 
world seems to have a taste for the worth of it, and 
it is of all books the most universally read except 
the Bible. 

Independently of chivalry, it is valuable, too, as a 
sort of sketch of the perpetual struggle in the hu- 
man soul. We have the hard facts of this world's 



118 THE POETRY OF COMEDY 

existence, and the ideal scheme struggling with 
these in a high enthusiastic manner delineated 
there ; and for this there is no more wholesome 
vehicle anywhere than irony, the best way in which 
these ideas can live. If he had given us only a 
high-flown panegyric of the Age of Gold he would 
have found no ear for him, it is the self-mockery in 
which he envelopes it which reconciles us to the 
high bursts of enthusiasm, and which will keep the 
matter alive in the heart as long as there are men to 
read it ! It is the poetry of comedy ! 

As a finish to all his noble qualities he possessed, 
in an eminent degree, the thing critics call humor, 
different from wit, mere laughter, which indeed 
seems to be much the same thing at first, though, in 
fact, widely different, and it has been said with much 
plausibility that the best test is, whether the writer 
in laughing at the objects of his wit, contemplates 
to produce an effect of any kind by it, or whether 
he is merely covering them with sport without being 
contemplative of any such end ; so that if anyone 
wishes to know the difference between humor and 
wit, the laughter of the fool, which the wise man, by 
a similitude founded on deep earnestness, called the 
crackling of thorns under a pot, let him read Cer- 
vantes on the one hand, and on the other, Voltaire, 
the greatest laugher the world ever knew. 

There remain two other characters which (taking 
leave with great regret of Cervantes) I must now 



CALDERON 119 

• 

notice. One of these is Lope de Vega, and the 
other Calderon. Both contain a certain representa- 
tion of the spirit of their age, although they do not 
come into actual contact with it. Of Calderon I 
have not read much, in fact, only one play and 
some choice specimens collected in German books, 
for his works are in great favor with the Germans, 
as much as the old dramas, Greek and others. 
They are extremely fond of Calderon, but I suspect 
that there is very much of forced taste in this ; he 
did not strike me much, except for the wild, vague 
shape he gave to his characters. There is in 
general much of the mystic and vague in Calderon. 
No doubt he was a man of great earnestness of 
mind, and deep genius, and he was in his day more 
popular by far than Cervantes, also it is clear that 
his are the best Spanish plays. Of Lope de Vega I 
can say almost nothing, except that he too has 
obtained an historical name among us. A man of 
the strangest literary fortune ! No man was ever 
so popular in his day as he was, courted by all, and 
even complimented in a letter by the Pope himself, 
insomuch that his name became proverbial for good 
fortune, or excellence, and it was the custom to call 
a fine day or fine woman, a Lope day ! a Lope 
woman ! He certainly was a man of a strange 
facility, but of much shallowness too, and greatly 
inferior to Calderon ; not that he was without 
genius, which if properly concentrated must have 



120 . LOPE DE VEGA 

become productive of large results, but it was ill 
directed. He wrote one of bis plays, be tells us, iu 
twenty-four bours, and I believe be wrote above a 
hundred at the same rapid rate, so that be suffered 
his genius to be dissipated away in sound and vague 
splendor, and he has passed altogether out of our 
remembrance. He was certainly very successful in 
obtaining wages, yet he complains very much of 
them in a letter to his son, who had a great wish to 
learn literature, wherein he counselled him most 
earnestly not to think of such a thing, that the life 
of a literary man is full of bitterness and of poverty ! 
This last was a singular complaint to come from 
him, as he certainly realized an immense sum of 
money by the profits of his works, and the presents 
that were made him. Still, he was a true poet in 
his way. 

In the history of Spanish literature there are only 
these three, Cervantes, Calderon, and Lope, and 
Cervantes is far above the other two ; and it is a 
curious reflection to make, that in so noble a nation, 
whose whole history is full of valiant actions and 
occurrences of every description, possessing so 
much cheerfulness, humanity, and quaint generos- 
ity, no writer for so many hundred years should 
have been produced who could speak the spirit of 
the nation, only Cervantes, an unknown, obscure in- 
dividual, maimed, for he had lost an arm, and 
miserably poor. It is universally true that we can- 



SPANISH ENTERPRISE 121 

not tell the meaning that is in men and things till a 
long time after their day. The Spanish nation was 
the most distinguished nation in the whole world. 
America was conquered by very great men of that 
nation ; Cortes — Alexander the Great was not 
greater than Cortes ! Pizarro, Balboa Nunez, the 
discoverer of the Pacific, of whom it is said that 
when he first beheld it he rushed into it till the 
waves reached his middle flourishing his sword, and 
took possession of the whole in the name of Spain 
with true chivalrous feeling ; and, again, we see him 
patching up the roof of his hut with leaves, dressed 
in an old canvas jacket. They were the most en- 
terprising people the world has seen yet. England 
and America, full as they are of the spirit of enter- 
prise, do not carry us farther, and therefore I say 
that it is a strange and almost awful thing to con- 
sider how completely that nation has now passed 
away, sunk down into an insignificant and altogether 
mean nation. Many accounts have been attempted 
to be given for this, but even now one does not at 
all see why it should have so happened ; we can 
only say just this, that its time was come, but the 
law which bound it cannot be understood at all ! 

It is curious to see how Spain broke itself to 
pieces in that conflict of Catholicism and chivalry 
with the Keformation, commonly called the Dutch 
War. It is one of the most beautiful and heroic 
pieces of history to see a poor people, mere fisher- 



122 THE DUTCH WAR 

men and shepherds, wishing to live quietly within 
their own dykes, and not to trouble the world at all, 
but who, happening to be among the first to receive 
a new doctrine, a new truth then preached in the 
world, could not get it maintained at all ; but the 
Inquisition burned and branded them for it, and 
they were at last obliged to revolt in consequence 
against the then King of Spain, Philip II., and re- 
sisted him successfully during a thirty years' war. 
The result was what it always will be in such a 
struggle, the triumph of the right cause, of truth 
and justice over a system of downright falsehood 
and abomination. The siege of Leyden is a memor- 
able event, it was surrounded by Spaniards on all 
sides, and reduced to the last straits by famine ; 
but it was not yielded, the defenders declared that 
they were ready, if necessary, to eat their left arms, 
and fight on with the right. One day the poor 
people of the town met the Governor in his rounds, 
and told him that they must surrender, or they 
would die of hunger, but he told them not to speak 
of such a thing, to eat him if they chose, but not to 
surrender. In the end they succeeded, as we know, 
in cutting the dykes at Flushing, and letting out 
the water into the Spanish camp, which they at- 
tacked in the confusion, and thus delivered the city. 
Their resolution was inveterate : they wore, many 
of them, crescents in their caps, to show that they 
would be Turks rather than Papists. 



DURATION OF TIIE STRUGGLE 123 

This struggle lasted for thirty years, and first 
made the nation remarkable in the world ; the whole 
of it does great credit to the German people, to 
whom they belong. 

This leads us naturally to the subject of our 
next lecture, " The German People and the Refor- 
mation." 



LECTURE VII. 

May 21st 

SECOND PERIOD— Continued 

The Germans— What They Haye Done— Reforma- 
tion— Luther— Ulrich von Hutten— Erasmus. 

In our last lecture we had a glimpse of the Dutch 
War, the war between the Spanish and Dutch 
nations, ami we observed the approach of a new 
life, the Reformation, and the Spanish Power 
wrecking itself against the Power it sought to 
molest, but which, instead, almost annihilated it. 
We are naturally led to look a little farther back 
into the causes of this new order of things, and to 
notice a new people more interesting to us, their 
descendants, than any we have yet noticed, namely, 
the Germans. 

The German people has been mentioned in 
authentic records for the last 2,100 years. The 
earliest notice we have of the Teutonic race is giv- 
en in Luden's History of Germany, in a passage 
recovered from Pytheas, an obscure author men- 
tioned by Strabo. This work of Pytheas, a sort of 



THE GERMAN PEOPLE 125 

journal of a Marseilles merchant, in which he has 
noted down such observations as occurred to him 
in his commercial journeyings, mentions a people 
called Germans as a " white-cornplexioned quiet 
people, living at the mouth of the Elbe." What 
the Germans were before that, or what they had 
been doing from immemorial time, can never be 
known, but it is clear that they were a race of men 
designed for great things ; perhaps even the highest 
of their destiny is not as yet attained. They be- 
came gradually known as they came into contact 
with the Romans ; as the contact more and more 
increased, collision more and more increased, til*l at 
last the Empire itself was absorbed by them, and the 
dark anticipation of Tacitus realized : that one day 
Rome would be destroyed by these barbarians ! In 
Tacitus' history, the old scanty records of German 
life are very interesting. Their character was cer- 
tainly uncivilized, but not at all savage ; it had a 
deep earnestness in it, and was that of a meditative 
people. The Scandinavian mythology is still a 
curious document, illustrative of many features of 
the German character. The account given of their 
form of worship by Tacitus evinces a very superior 
species of Paganism, indicative of a deep nature. 
They worshipped the earth — Thorili or Tenth — from 
whom they themselves claimed to be descended. 
The thought of the people was forming its deep 
words long before they came out into speech. Their 



126 THE BERSERKER 

whole mythology, that dark vast solitude, the home 
of darkness, the home of light, the great hall of 
Odin, and other such, belong to a people having 
deep thoughts lying in it. 

The story of the Berserker, which has attracted 
the attention of antiquaries during the last fifty 
years, is the personification of what lay deep in the 
German mind, the wild mind of Germany. The 
Berserker was one who despised danger and fear, 
rushed forth fiercely to battle, and, though without 
armor, trod down hosts of foes like shells under his 
feet. Hence his name, Berserker, "bare spirit." 
This character is analogous to much that we find 
in the Germans. Not, certainly, a true sample of 
their feeling is that constant state of explosive fury 
which marks the Berserker ; yet it illustrates their 
fundamental character, the strange fierceness called 
afterward by Italians the "furore Tedesco," the most 
dreadful of any. Yet rage of that sort, defying all 
dangers and obstacles, if kept down sufficiently, is 
as a central fire, which will make all things to grow 
on the surface above it. Fighting is the only way 
it displays itself in the Berserker, but in the Ger- 
mans at large it appears in many other ways. Well 
if it never come out in that Berserker Wuth, as it is 
called. On the whole, it is the best character that 
can belong to any nation, producing strength of all 
sorts, and all the concomitants of strength, perse- 
verance, steadiness. It is not easily excited, but 



JUSTICE OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE 127 

when called up, it will have its object accomplished. 
We find it in all their history. 

Justice : that is another of its concomitants. 
Strength, one may say, is justice itself. The strong 
man is he that can be just ; that sets everything 
in its own rightful place, one above the other. It is 
the only way to do anything great and strong ; and 
it is always the boast, and a legitimate one, of this 
people that they are a just people, framing all their 
institutions for ends of justice. 

Trial by jury is essentially German. Tacitus 
mentions the existence of an institution precisely 
analogous to it ; and to this day, in one part of 
Switzerland, there is an old usage of very remote 
tradition, called the "street court," itself quite a rude 
jury, by which tradition, if two men meet upon the 
high road, men travelling on business— say carriers, 
drovers — and one of them do some injury to the 
other, and they cannot agree about it, they are bound 
to wait there till seven other persons shall have 
come up, and these shall judge of the dispute (hence 
the name "street court," "road court," "strasse 
gericht ") ; and they are to decide it irrevocably. I 
say that all the rudiments of our trial by jury exist 
there in that canton of Switzerland. These few de- 
tails sufficiently indicate to us what the German 
character is, and I shall leave you to expand what I 
have said in your own minds over other traits quite 
as characteristic. 



128 SWITZERLAND 

Before the Reformation even, the Germans had 
already appeared more than* once in modern history. 
First, when Europe itself was completely destroyed 
by them ; when, after more than two centuries of 
confused fighting, they at last made peace among 
themselves and joined against Rome, till Europe 
was altogether abolished, and made anew. This 
first period, however, was little but a confused de- 
lineation of all the influences of that time at work in 
Europe till the time of Charlemagne. He was also 
a German, and got all Germany united under him. 
The modern system of division into kingdoms and 
principalities came from him. 

Their next appearance in the world's history was 
at the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the 
fourteenth centuries in Switzerland, for the Swiss 
are, in fact, Germans. This was the age of Dante. 
They were the first in modern Europe who attempt- 
ed to establish a regular government of liberty or 
freedom. The history of William Tell, a beautiful 
mythos, is grounded on indisputable facts. Most 
probably the story of the apple is not true ; indeed, 
it is altogether improbable, as it has been told of 
others besides Tell ; nor that of Gessler's hat either, 
according to Johannes von Miiller. But, what is 
certain, is that after enduring with extreme patience 
their wrongs for some space of time, they did con- 
trive to hurl out the Austrian dominion, and to estab- 
lish in its place a regular government. 



SWISS AND CHARLES THE BOLD 129 

This is a thing which reflects great credit on the 
whole nation of Germans, and leads men to admire 
them more and more as they consider it. One does 
not know any instance where the people, during a 
contest so long and obstinate, have comported them- 
selves so well throughout ; enduring their grievances 
at first, and even sluggishly patient under them ; 
but, finally, these remaining unredressed, rising into 
a lion-like rage with all the spirit of the Berserker 
against their tyrants. 

Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was the last 
to feel their brave resolution. He wanted a kingdom, 
and for this sole reason contrived to quarrel with 
them, as he imagined it was quite easy, with his 
knights and men-at-arms, to overcome these peasants, 
who fought on foot. He, therefore, made a quarrel 
with them, but was altogether defeated in three great 
battles, Granson, Morat, and Nancy, at which last 
place he wrecked himself against the Swiss. In the 
first battle, we are told, they knelt down when they 
saw Charles' immense army coming, as it were, to 
swallow them up, and prayed that God would that 
day assist them to fight against their enemies. Co- 
mines says that Charles, seeing this, cried : " See ! 
they yield." But others, who knew them better, 
observed that " they did not much like that species 
of yielding altogether." And accordingly the}' soon 
found out that there was not much in it to like at 
all. The Swiss rose like a whirlwind on their ene- 
9 



130 THE EEFOKMATIOJST 

mies, overwhelmed them, and maintained their own 
rights ! 

But the third remarkable appearance of the Ger- 
mans was at the Keformation, and greater than all. 
This was in the sixteenth century. I have repeat- 
edly alluded to the necessity of change in matters 
of doctrine, the impossibility of any creed being 
perpetual, any theory which man's small mind may 
form of this great universe being complete, though 
he should study to all eternity the immensity of 
which he is a fraction. Any opinion he may form 
will only serve him for a time, it expands itself 
daily, for progression is the law of every man : if 
he be a fool even, still, he must have some power of 
progress ; it is inevitable, and his creed will conse- 
quently go on expanding by degrees till it gets to its 
extreme limits, or, if not, till he discovers some ideas 
which are inconsistent with it, and will produce un- 
easiness in the mind, to go on increasiDg generation 
after generation till it comes at last to spoken pro- 
test. Another cause of the ruin of a creed consists 
in the fact that when the mind begins to be dubious 
it will rush with double rapidity toward destruc- 
tion, for all serious men hate dubiety ; these view 
the creed indeed, but if not satisfied with it have 
done with it forever. They may decline meddling 
with it for a long time, but when they come to ques- 
tion it they will have nothing to do with it, they do 
not want to have popes or priests under any such 



CORRUPTION OF THE CHURCH 131 

system. But there is always a number of inferior 
men who aim at the rewards which the Church has 
to bestow, and therefore they willingly adhere to it, 
and the very circumstance of any such attaching 
themselves to any given system is of itself a certain 
and infallible cause of ruin to it. This last cir- 
cumstance was precisely the case with the Eoman 
Catholic Church at this time. There was no Pope 
Hildebrand then ready to sacrifice life itself to the 
end that he might make the Church the highest 
thing in the world. Anyone who was inclined to 
see things in their proper light then would have de- 
cided that it was better to have nothing to do with 
it, but crouch down in an obscure corner somewhere 
and read his Bible, and get what good he can for 
himself in that way, but have nothing to with the 
Machiavellian policy of such a Church. The popes 
of that age were such men as Julius II., Borgia, and 
Leo X., who did indeed maintain the Church, but 
as to faith in it, they just believed nothing at all, 
or believed only that they got so many thousand 
crowns a year by it ; the whole was one chimera, one 
miserable sham. That change, however, had been 
working more and more since Dante's time. Dante 
himself has abundant complaints to make about 
popes, putting several of them into hell and fright- 
ful punishments there, and even earlier than Dante 
in all literary men we see a more and more growing 
censoriousness of priests and popes, till in the six- 



132 LUTHER 

teenth century it had become the fixed idea of all 
intelligent men, followers of manful and honorable 
views, that priests and monks were an indolent, use- 
less race who only set themselves against what con- 
duced to human improvement in all departments. 

In these circumstances Martin Luther was born. 
His parents were of the poorest people. His father 
was a poor miner of Mcerha or Moer, near Eisenach, 
in Upper Saxony, where Luther was born on No- 
vember 10, 1483. He was a man of the largest 
intellect and learning born in that century, put 
down by nature as it seemed for the lowest sphere 
of life, to beat out a little lead ore in his capacity of 
miner, but it was not so appointed. His father, 
who seems to have been a remarkable man, con- 
nived to send him to a school, where he struggled 
on in his studies for a long time. It appears that 
he went with other of the boys, as was their cus- 
tom, through the various villages in the intervals of 
study, singing ballads, and getting in this way a few 
coppers thrown to him, till at last the widow of a 
rich burgher, hearing of his ability, assisted him 
forward, and got him placed at the University, 
where he soon distinguished himself. His father 
wished him to be a lawyer, and he was at first 
studying for that, but afterward, upon seeing a 
companion struck suddenly dead by his father's 
side, Luther, naturally a serious, melancholy-mind- 
ed man, was so struck to the heart at seeing before 



EAPwLY LIFE 133 

his eyes a dear friend at once hurried away into 
Eternity and infinitude, that the law and the pro- 
motions it offered him sank into a poor, miserable 
dream in comparison to the great reality before 
him, and he became a monk that he might occupy 
himself wholly with prayer and religion. He be- 
came, as he tells us, "a strict and painful monk," 
and this life continued many years, nearly ten 
years. He was very miserable in that life, imagin- 
ing himself doomed to everlasting perdition, and he 
could not see how prayer, saying of masses, could 
save him or get him to Heaven. At last one of his 
brother monks, a pious, good man, told him, what 
was quite new to him at that time, that the real 
secret of the thing lay in repentance and faith in 
Jesus Christ. This was the first insight he ever got 
into it, that it was not prayer nor masses at all that 
could save him, but falling down in spirit as Script- 
ure says at the foot of the Cross ! At this time, 
too, he found a Bible, an old Vulgate Bible, in the 
convent library, which he read, and in this way he 
got peace of mind at last, but he seems to have in- 
troduced no project of reform at the time. 

He continued to grow in esteem with everybody. 
The Elector of Saxony, hearing of his great talents 
and harmony, brought him to the University he had 
just founded, and made him one of the professors 
there. His convent afterward sent him to Home, 
for he still remained an Augustinian monk, to man- 



134 THE SALE OP INDULGENCES 

age some affairs of the convent ; this was in the time 
of Pope Julius II. He was deeply shocked at all 
he saw there, but was not in the least aware then 
of the work he was, in a few years, to do. It is a 
true saying of Schiller's : " Genius is ever a secret 
to itself ; the strong man is he that is unconscious 
of his own strength." But at last Tetzel, the cele- 
brated Dominican, came into Saxony to sell indul- 
gences. He was sent by Pope Leo X., who wanted 
money for some purpose, some say to buy jewels 
for a niece, and he sold them there beside Luther. 
Luther soon found it out in the confessional, as he 
heard frequently from those who came to confess, 
that they had no need of repentance for this or that 
sin, since they had bought indulgences for them ! 
This set Luther to preach a sermon against the sale 
of indulgences at all, in which he asserted that the 
Church has only power to remit the penalties itself 
imposes on sin, but not to pardon sin, and that no 
man has any authority to do that. Tetzel respond- 
ed to this, and at last Luther saw himself obliged 
to look deeper into the matter, and to publish his 
ninety-five propositions as to indulgences, denying 
the foundation of the whole matter altogether, and 
challenging Tetzel to prove it to him either in rea- 
son or Scripture. This occasioned a great ferment 
in Germany, already in an unsettled state of opin- 
ion, and produced several missions from the Pope. 
Cardinal Cajetan tried to persuade him to retract, 



THE DIET OF WORMS 135 

but, not succeeding, at last brought him before the 
Diet of Worms. Luther, on the other hand, was 
going farther and farther off, as his enemies irri- 
tated him, seeking to discover what truth there 
might be in any of the Church's doctrines ; till 
finally, being excommunicated by the Pope, he pub- 
licly burned the excommunication in the presence 
of his friends, and excited thereby a deep murmur 
of astonished expectancy among the beholders, but 
nothing more then, though they could not help feel- 
ing that the truth must be with him. 

A few did stand by him, however ; and finally, in 
the year 1521, the year after that, he surrendered 
himself to the Diet of Worms, where the Emperor 
had resolved to have him tried, although he remem- 
bered how Huss had been betrayed before, and his 
safe conduct violated. It was in the eyes of all a 
daring, great, fearful enterprise, but not fearful to 
Luther, whose life was not to sink into a downy 
sleep, while he heard the great call of a far other 
life upon him, so he determined to go. This was 
on the 17th of April, 1521. Charles V., the Emperor, 
and the six Electors were sitting there, and there was 
he, a poor man, son of a poor miner, with nothing 
but God's truth for his support. His friends met 
him at the gate, and told him not to enter the city, 
as the danger was great ; but he told them delib- 
erately " that, upon the whole, he would go in, 
though there were as many devils in Worms as 



136 NO RECANTATION 

house-tiles." He accordingly appeared, and went 
through an examination on natters of religion, 
which was wound up by the question : " Would he 
recant his opinions ? " 

The answer was to be given on the morrow ; he 
meditated it all the night. Next morning, as he 
passed through the streets, the people were all on 
their housetops, calling on him not to deny the 
truth, and saying, "Whoso denieth Me before men, 
him will I deny before My Father." And there 
were other voices of that sort which spoke to his 
heart, but he passed on without a word. In the 
Council he spoke in reply for two hours, and was 
admired by everybody for his modest sincerity. 
" As to the retractation, he first wished to have ex- 
plained to him what was wrong in the opinions." 
They told him " that they had nothing to do with 
scholastic theology, the question was, Would he re- 
cant?" To this he answered "that his book was 
divided into two portions, part of it was his own, 
part was Scripture. In the former it was possible 
that there was much error, which, if proved, he was 
not only willing, but eager to retract ; but as to the 
other part, he could not retract it. It was» neither 
safe nor prudent to do anything against Conscience ; 
let me," he said, " be convicted of error from the 
Bible, or let the thing stand as written. Here I take 
my stand ; it is neither safe nor prudent to do any- 
thing against Conscience ; God be my help. Amen ! *» 



TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE 137 

This speech will be forever memorable; it was as 
brave a speech as was ever uttered by man. It was 
the beginning of things not fully developed even 
yet, but kindled then first into a flame, which shall 
never be extinguished. It was the assertion of the 
right of consulting one's own conscience, which every 
new founder of a civilization must now take along 
with him, which has entered largely into all the ac- 
tivity men have had since ! 

From this Council he returned to the Convent of 
Wartzburg, under protection of the Elector of Sax- 
ony, where he translated the Bible ; and he had 
twenty-five years of life after this Council : a life of 
wild struggle, busy and harassed. There is no other 
finer proof of his greatness than the way he con- 
ducted himself while enjoying the confidence of 
princes ; never was his head affected by it, and no 
judgment ever proceeded from him that was not 
that of a worthy and brave man. He kept peace 
between the parties during his life, and soon after 
his death the war broke out, and the Smalcaldic 
League was formed. 

At Wartzburg, once famous for the Minnesingers, 
he first translated the Bible into the vulgar tongue. 
This was the most notable work since Ulphilas' trans- 
lation into Gothic, made in the fourth century, and 
it remains to this day a most admirable version. 

Luther's character, on the whole, is one of the 
most characteristic in Germany, of whatsoever is best 



138 ERASMUS 

in German minds. He is the image Ox a large, sub- 
stantial, deep man, that stands upon truth, justice, 
fairness, that fears nothing, considers the right, and 
calculates on nothing else ; and again, does not do 
it spasmodically, but adheres to it deliberately and 
calmly, through good report and bad. Accordingly, 
we find him a good-humored, jovial, witty man, 
greatly beloved by every one, and though his words 
were half battles, as Jean Paul says, stronger than 
artillery, yet among his friends he was one of the 
kindest of men. The wild kind of force that was in 
him appears in the physiognomy of the portrait by 
Luke Chranak, his painter and friend, the rough 
plebeian countenance, with all sorts of noble thoughts 
shining out through it. That was precisely Luther 
as he appears through his whole history. 

Another great German personage, very different 
from Luther, but who also deserves to be noticed, is 
Erasmus, a Dutchman (for, as we observed, the Dutch 
are in fact the same as the Germans, and Erasmus, 
at any rate, wrote German and spoke it too). His 
business with respect to the Eeformation was trifling, 
compared to that of Luther. He was sixteen years 
older than Luther ; born at Eotterdam. He, too, 
like every clear-headed man, was disgusted with that 
dark ignorance of the monks, and satirized them, and 
at first admitted the necessity of some kind of re- 
formation, but that he should risk his ease and com- 
fort for it did not enter into his calculations at all ; 



WORKS OF ERASMUS 139 

and though he supported Luther at first, he after- 
ward quarrelled with him, and opposed all his views. 
He was a great scholar. There was something in- 
teresting about his mother's history. His real name 
had been Gerhardt, but he took that of Erasmus — 
"love child." His mother's was a most tragical life ; 
she had been separated from his father by her friends, 
and he, believing the rumor of her death, made 
himself a priest ; on hearing of which, she sank into 
an untimely grave. 

His mother took him to school. Poor, forlorn 
woman ! she did not know then that he was to be- 
come a light of the world ! Rudolf Agricola came 
to the school, and first observing his abilities, took 
him by the hand and said, " Study, my little boy ; 
thou shalt be the talk of all men before long." He 
subsequently came under the notice of the Arch- 
bishop of Paris, who brought him over to England. 
Afterward he came frequently to England ; he knew 
More, the Chancellor, intimately. He led from this 
time a kind of wandering life. Mount joy, our Eng- 
lish Ambassador at Paris, was the first to obtain him 
a pension. He published many books, among others 
an edition of the Greek Testament, but the work he 
was then best known by was the Praise of Folly, 
written here in More's house ; it disappoints anyone 
who would read it now. Also he wrote his Colloquies, 
a very ingenious book, and of a great delicacy ; in- 
deed, I should say, to make my friends understand the 



140 ULRICH VON HUTTEN 

character of Erasmus, that he is more like Addison 
than any writer I could mention who is familiarly 
known in this country. I have said what his course 
was toward the Keformation — that at first he ap- 
proved of Luther, and then disapproved of him. He 
was a man certainly of great merit, nor have I much 
to say against him ; yet when I hear historians con- 
trasting him favorably with Luther, and actually up- 
braiding Luther with him, I must dissent altogether 
from that, and say that Erasmus is not to be named 
by the side of Luther ; a mere writer of poems, a 
"litterateur." There are many things in Erasmus 
to object to. Franz Horn is very angry, too, about 
this setting up of Erasmus, concerning which, I for 
one, desire nothing more than not to get angry too, 
and spasmodic, as Luther himself did, in fact, suc- 
ceed in doing. Franz says Erasmus belonged to a 
class of people who are very desirous to stand well 
with God, yet, at the same time, are very loth to 
stand ill with the devil ; who will build a church to 
God, and a chapel by the side of it for the devil, a 
sort of position that really is not good in the world. 
There is a third striking German character whom 
we must notice, Ulrich von Hutten. He was a 
nobleman by birth, destined at first by his father, 
a rather foolish, obstinate man, to be a monk, which 
not wishing to be, he was then marked out for a 
lawyer, but not that either would he be ; till at last 
he got sent by some cousins, who understood him 



SATIRE ON THE MONKS 141 

better than his father did, to a school or university 
of some kind, where he occupied himself with liter- 
ary pursuits. He wrote many books, both in Latin 
and German, principally in Latin, and became dis- 
tinguished and known in his own country ; but his 
life was never easy to him. He was a wanderer all 
his days, travelling about to Frankfort and other 
places, and even to Rome. He was much too head- 
long a man ; he so hated injustice that he did not 
know how to deal with it, and he became heart- 
broken by it at last. 

He had begun before Luther to satirize monk- 
ery in his "Epistolae Obscurorum," not entirely 
written by him, indeed ; three or four of the best 
heads joined with him in it. It is very amusing, 
but full of all kinds of platitudes ; a collection of 
letters supposed to be written by monks, one monk 
writing to another what he intends to do, and lay- 
ing bare all the details of that miserable imbecile 
life. Erasmus, it is related, burst out laughing on 
reading it, and by this means broke a suppuration 
in the throat, which had formed and endangered his 
life, a thing, therefore, of immense consequence to 
him. Ulrich had many struggles to meet. His 
cousin was basely hanged by the Duke of Wirtem- 
berg, assassinated in a wood for some dark purpose. 
Hutten indignantly pleaded everywhere against the 
Duke for this, and even went to war with him, in 
alliance with the free towns then in arms against 



142 STAUNCH SUPPORT OF LUTHER 

him. He found it difficult to get any man in office 
to patronize him. He says of himself that he 
"hated tumult" of all kinds; and it was thus a 
painful and sad position for him — who wished to 
obey order, while a still higher order commanded 
him to disobey ; when the standing by the existing 
order would be, in fact, the standing by disorder. 

Ulrich was miserably disordered all his life, and 
wholly without guidance. He, a proud nobleman's 
son, looked down at first on Luther, a poor monk ; 
but immediately after the Diet of Worms he recog- 
nized that Luther was a great man, and soon main- 
tained a correspondence with him. He once wrote 
to Luther : " Thy work is of God, and will con- 
tinue ; mine " (his was to force Germany from monk- 
ery and oppression), " mine is of man, and will not 
continue." He was much courted and flattered by 
the Emperor of Germany and other Catholic princes, 
and even by Francis, the King of the French ; but 
he positively refused to quit Luther's party. A 
price was set on his head ; not exactly that either, 
but the magistrates of his city had certainly orders 
to have him sent bound hand and foot to Borne, 
and murderous assassins were hired to slay him, 
from all which he was obliged to escape by flight. 
In that journey he met Hochstratten, the head 
monk, whom he had satirized in his " Epistolse 
Obscurorum," and who had ever since raised the 
prince's ire. Full of rage, he dashed down on him, 



FRANZ YON SICKINGEN 143 

drawing his sword ; but when the imbecile being 
who had done him all this mischief uttered a 
prayer, changing his purpose he hurled him away, 
and passed on. In this journey, too, he met with 
Franz von Sickingen, an extraordinary, interesting- 
character, and introduced by Goethe into his " Ber- 
lichingen." Franz gave him shelter in his castle, and 
here the two first read Luther's books, and con- 
fessed that the thing which he meant, all good men 
should mean ! Ulrich published books, too, in this 
place. 

The death of Sickingen contains a very noble 
thing. He had a feud with the Archbishop of 
Treves, and he defended himself in his castle on 
the Rhine, Landstein, where the archbishop be- 
sieged him ; but he could not be overcome at all, 
till one day, while looking at the state of the de- 
fences, he was struck by a musket-ball, and died in 
twenty-four hours after. The castle at once surren- 
dered, as in him the soul of the defence was taken 
away. And here comes the noble thing I alluded 
to. At the point of death, while he was already 
pale with death, the archbishop came in to see him, 
the archbishop who had caused his destruction, and 
Sickingen at once raised his cap, unmindful of the 
feud, for his reverence for what was above him was 
far deeper than that ; and this seems to me the 
noblest, politest thing that is recorded of any such 
moment as that. 



144 EEASMUS AND HUTTEN 

Sickingen being killed, Hutten had no resource 
but again to wander forth ; and then occurred the 
worst thing that I have read of Erasmus, who once, 
when poor and dependent, flattered Hutten, and ob- 
tained his patronage, but was now living at Basle, 
a rich man, and admitted to the councils of the 
Emperor. To him Hutten came for relief, but he 
would have nothing to do with him. Hutten then 
wrote to his friends, complaining of this miserable 
treatment of Erasmus, and Erasmus then gave a 
false account of it in a work he published, where- 
upon Hutten wrote at last to Erasmus, most indig- 
nantly exposing the true affair as a miserably shab- 
by thing to have been perpetrated against a poor 
man, without hope, without money, without friends ! 
Erasmus then took a violent antipathy to Hutten, 
and wrote satires upon him ; but it was a poor 
thing that, and he could not clear himself. Hutten 
then wandered on ; but the hand of death was on 
him. He came to Zurich ; but Erasmus wrote be- 
forehand to the magistrates, warning them against 
him as a hot-headed person, and they forced him to 
quit the place. He left it, and came to a small 
island in the lake of Zurich, and died there shortly 
afterward. He had maintained a sister up to his 
death, and at his death there was found in his pock- 
et only one thaler. He died in his thirty-fifth year 
— one of the bravest men Germany ever had, but of 
a spirit that could not get to exhibit itself in litera- 



DEATH OF HUTTEN 145 

ture at all ; the rough draft of something excellent, 
but which could not get out into its full delineation. 
This must suffice for what can be said of the 
Eeformation in Germany. In my next lecture I 
shall resume the subject with reference to a coun- 
try still more interesting to us — namely, our own 
country. 

10 



LECTUKE VIII. 

May 25th 

SECOND PEKIOD— Continued 

The English: Their Origin, Their Work and Des- 
tiny — Elizabethan Era — Shakespeare — John 
Knox — Milton — Beginning op Scepticism. 

In our last lecture we introduced ourselves to the 
German people, the great Teutonic race, and to the 
great work which was intrusted to them to do by 
the economy of Providence in this world of ours. 
We have now to occupy ourselves with one particu- 
lar tribe of the Teutonic race : whether or not the 
most important — although from the great things 
they have had to do we might call it so — it is indis- 
putably the most interesting to us, for it is our own 
nation, the Saxon or English. This nation, too, 
first came into decisive notice about the time of the 
Eeformation, and as a nation much connected with 
that great event. We shall cast a glance over the 
period which preceded its arriving at the condition 
of an articulately - speaking nation, when it began 
partly to understand its own meaning, partly to an- 
nounce it. 



THE SAXONS 147 

The Saxons are not noticed in the earliest periods 
by the Romans. They are not even mentioned in 
Tacitus. In Ptolemy there is but one single line 
about them. He speaks of "the Saxons, a people 
inhabiting the northern part of the Cimbric Cher- 
sonesus," the modern Denmark. Bat they had 
come into extraordinary notice from their formid- 
able character in the fourth century, and were, along 
with the Lombards, the chief fighters of the Ger- 
man tribes. As to their piracies, the}' were addicted 
early to the sea ; the adventurous of the tribe occu- 
pied themselves very much with piracy and sailing 
of all kinds. Their feats in sailing and fighting ex- 
cited the greatest terror among the Romans. Si- 
donius Apollinaris and Ammianus Marcellinus both 
commemorate the ungovernable temper and wild 
spirit of this people. Their craft were of a rude 
description, made of wicker and covered with 
leather. Gibbon describes their habit of ascending 
the Rhine in these wicker boats, then carrying them 
on their shoulders across the country to the Rhone 
and launching them there, to make their appearance 
in a short time at the Straits of Gibraltar. Am- 
mianus Marcellinus speaks much of their fondness 
for the sea. It is curious to see in this manner 
the ancestors of our Blakes and Nelsons among 
these people. In general, indeed, a seafaring peo- 
ple is required to be one of the strongest of peo- 
ples. Nothing can be a better measure of the 



148 CHARACTER OF THE SAXONS 

strength of a man than to put him into a ship in 
the middle of the wild elements exposed to the 
rage and variableness of the winds, which he must 
observe with an ever-watchful care and shape him- 
self by them, and wait for and seize every favorable 
instant for the purpose of his enterprise. Accord- 
ingly we find that the Dutch and English tribes are 
the greatest of the Germans. So in Luden or Mas- 
cou, I think Mascou, we find the mythus of the crea- 
tion of the Teutonic people, how one tribe was made 
out of the mould of the valley of the Danube, an- 
other out of water, but the Saxons out of the Saxa 
or rock of the Hartz Mountains. They were, in 
fact, the hardest of the tribes, and greatly distin- 
guished in that respect from the rest of the Ger- 
mans ; there was a kind of silent ruggedness of 
Nature in them, with the wild Berserker rage 
deeper down in the Saxons than in others. They 
have a kind of resemblance to theJRomans in that 
respect, though much of it has not unfolded itself 
even among the English, for we have as yet pro- 
duced no great painter, nor anyone who has ex- 
celled in the highest arts except Shakespeare, and 
yet a nation which has produced a Shakespeare we 
may justly conclude to be capable of producing 
much. Their talent, however, was practical like 
that of the Komans, a greatness of perseverance, 
adherence to a purpose, method — practical great- 
ness in short. 



ARRIVAL OF THE SAXONS 149 

If any seer among them in the year 449, when 
they landed here in the Isle of Thanet, could have 
looked forward to the year 1838 as we can look back 
to 449, he would have said, as we may say, that 
great and remarkable as the foundation of Rome 
certainly was, it was not a greater fact, nor so great 
even, as that humble settlement of the Saxons on 
these shores. He would have seen our present do- 
minion extending from the Gulf of California, from 
the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, away up to the 
Ganges and Burrampootra, and descending even to 
our antipodes. He would have seen these descend- 
ants of Saxons conquering more than the Eomans 
did, who subdued men, but these subdued the in- 
coherences and difficulties of Nature, reclaiming 
wild and boundless wastes and converting them 
into arable land and scenes of civilization ! 

For about a hundred years after their landing 
Saxons continued arriving : one regrets greatly that 
there is no intelligence to be had about this matter, 
so full of moment, rude energy, and significance. 
For three hundred years the war with the Britons, 
ancient possessors of the soil, lasted ; these and the 
Caledonians were gradually driven back into the 
mountains, and the Lowlands were made into a 
Saxon country. To this day "Saxon" is the Celtic 
name for the English ; the Highland Scotch apply 
it to the Lowlanders yet. The name " English " or 
"Angles" arose out of a small territory from which 



150 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 

they originally came, in the Duchy of Schleswick, 
where to this day it is called " Angleland." 

The etymology of the name " Saxons " is uncer- 
tain, nor is it of any value. The opinion seems to 
be that it is derived from Saks, a sword or knife 
worn by this people. Nennius has preserved the 
word of command used by their leader Hengist, 
" Niemet hyr Saxas ! " (take your knives). " Saks " 
is the Westphalian name yet, or was when Mascou 
wrote. After these 300 years there remained yet 
300 years more of incessant fighting between the 
different kingdoms of the Heptarchy. We read of 
battles and successions of kings, and one endeavors 
to remember them, but without success, except so 
much of this flocking or fighting as Milton gives 
us, viz., that they were the battles of kites and crows, 
for they have no interest for us. Indeed, those 
who took part in this flocking and fighting were 
making the reverse of a history of England. Who- 
ever was uprooting a thistle or bramble, or drain- 
ing out a bog, or building himself a house, or, in 
short, leaving a single section of order where he had 
found disorder, that man was writing the history of 
England, the others were only obstructing it. Yet 
these battles were natural enough. The people who 
should succeed in keeping themselves at the top 
of affairs were the fittest to be there, the weakest 
would maintain themselves for a while, but when 
the attack came they would be obliged in every 



ALFRED 151 

case to surrender to the more force and method that 
was in the others, which must triumph over all the 
incoherent characters that needed to be regulated 
by it. A wild kind of intellect as well as courage 
was shown by each party in his own department, in 
his own circumstances. 

Traces of deep feeling are scattered over this his- 
tory, as, indeed, over that of all the Germans. For 
example, there is the speech of Clotaire, the French 
king, himself a German, and a remarkable one it is. 
When he was dying, when he felt himself djdng, he 
exclaimed: "WaJ Wa ! What great God is this 
that pulls down the strength of the strongest kings ? " 
It was the expression of a wild astonishment in the 
barbarous mind at the terrible approach of some 
great unknown thing which he could not escape. 
There was, too, an affectionateness, a largeness of 
soul in the intervals of these fights of kites and 
crows. We often see a prince doing all the good he 
could, arranging everything as far as it was possible 
to arrange it. 

There was one memorable instance of this — 
namely, Alfred. He was not exactly the first that 
united the different kingdoms together, yet we may, 
on the whole, say that he was the first. He pos- 
sessed a very great mind, the highest qualification for 
his office. He lived in a rude, dark age. We all 
know his fighting against the Danish pirates ; his 
succeeding, after great exertions and fightings, to get 



152 THE NORMANS 

his crown back to him again ; and how he pacified 
the country by treaty and wise policy as much as by 
war. Then in literature his services were, for the 
age, great ; he translated many books from the Latin 
language into Saxon. He first shaped the thing we 
call the British Constitution ; he laid the founda- 
tions of it, as it were. One fancies, too, that he was 
able to have an instinct into the business, and in 
that view to lay out institutions which have already 
lasted 1,100 years. He founded Oxford according 
to tradition, not by the name of university, but at 
any rate he founded schools there. He was as great 
a man for this island as Charlemagne was the cen- 
tury before for Europe. His influence was not for 
the moment felt, but it has borne abundant fruit in 
after times. Voltaire said of him that he was the 
greatest man in history — for his self-denial and 
heroic endeavors on the one hand, and his mild 
gentleness combined with that on the other. 

In the next century, or a century and a half after- 
ward, the Normans gained possession of the throne 
of England, an important event, which brought 
this country into more immediate connection with 
the Continent, and produced other results not all 
beneficial in their way. They were the same people 
(I say this in contradiction to a vague notion which 
has circulated that, by the Conquest, England 
became divided into two peoples), who had left 
their country three or four centuries after the Saxon 



ELIZABETH 153 

pirates had come to these shores, and in the course 
of their emigration had learned a new language by 
their introduction to the Latin and the French, and 
had generally attained to a higher culture than the 
Saxons. They endeavored, too, to introduce the 
French language in this country, but wholly failed. 

The history of the succeeding periods is but a 
strange description of elements. There seems to 
have been nothing but war. At any rate, war was 
far more frequent here than in any other country ; 
and this lasted down to the very neighborhood of 
Queen Elizabeth, for it was not till the reign of 
her grandfather that the kingdom became consoli- 
dated. Nay, Scotland was still more remarkable in 
this respect. It had been continually fluctuating 
for six centuries before the end of the Heptarchy, 
now embracing Cumberland, now confined to the 
Grampians. But in England, after the Wars of the 
Roses had been ended, things began to change, till 
at last the whole amalgamated into some distinct 
vital unit}'. 

This was begun about the time of Queen Eliza- 
beth, in many respects the summation of innumera- 
ble influences, the co-ordination of many things, 
which till then had been in contest ; the first beau- 
tiful outflush of energy, the first articulate spoken 
energy. There was Saxon energy before that, in 
Hengist and in Horsa ; not a spoken energy, but a 
silent one ; not shown in speech, but in work. It 



154 SHAKESPEARE 

was here, as in general, the end of an epoch when 
it began to speak. The old principle, feudalism, 
and that other one, the Catholic religion, were 
beginning to end ; when, like the cactus-tree, which 
blooms but once in centuries, so here appeared the 
blossom of poetry for once, which done, that energy 
was to carry itself on according to such laws as are 
suitable to it, abiding till the time of a future mani- 
festation. Nowhere has such a number of great 
people been at once produced as here in the Eliza- 
bethan era — Bacon, Ealeigh, Spenser; above all, 
Shakespeare ! It is not possible for us to go 
through all those names in our short space, and we 
must therefore confine our attention to Shakepeare 
alone. 

Shakespeare is the epitome of the era of Eliza- 
beth. A man, in whom that era, as well as other 
eras, have found a voice ; one who gives utterance 
to many things silent before him, and worthy to be 
called the spokesman of our nation ! It is now uni- 
versally admitted that he must be regarded as the 
greatest person that has been produced in the lit- 
erature of modern Europe. The Germans have 
long been as enthusiastic admirers of him as our- 
selves, and often more enlightened and judicious 
ones, for there the highest minds have occupied 
themselves with criticism of Shakespeare. One of 
the finest things of the kind ever produced is 
Goethe's criticism on Hamlet in his " Wilhelm 



HIS INTELLECT 155 

- \ /" f 

Meister," which many among you are aware of. ' I 

may call it the reproduction of Hamlet in a shape 
addressed to the intellect, as Hamlet is already ad- 
dressed to the imagination.'! 'Even the French, in 
late times, have come over to think in the same way. 
He was one of the great sons of Nature, like a 
Homer, an iEschylus, a Dante — a voice from the 
innermost heart of Nature. He speaks the dialect 
of the sixteenth century in words much more ex- 
pressive and comprehensive than any used before 
him, for knowledge had made great progress in his 
time, and therefore his language became more com- 
plex and rich in significance. 

Anyone who takes in his likeness accurately must 
pronounce him an universal man /J There is no tone 
of feeling that is not capable of yielding melodious 
resonance to that of Shakespeare. We have the 
southern sunny language of his Juliet, the wild 
northern melody of his Hamlet, varied with most 
piercing feeling and tones of tenderness ; the rude 
heartfelt humor of his Autolycuses and Dogberry s, 
and, finally, the great stern Berserker rage burning- 
deep down under all, and making all to grow out in 
the most flourishing way, doing ample justice to all 
feelings, not developing any one in particular, but 
yielding to us all that can be required of him upon 
every subject. In a word, if I were bound to de- 
scribe him, I should be inclined to say that his in- 
tellect was far greater than that of any other man 



156 HIS HISTORICAL INSIGHT 

who has given an account of himself by writing 
books. I know that there have been distinctions 
drawn between intellect, imagination, fancy, and 
so on, and doubtless there are conveniences in such 
division, but at the same time we must keep this 
fact in view, that the mind is one, and consists not 
of bundles of faculties at all, showing ever the same 
features however it exhibits itself — whether in 
painting, singing, fighting, ever with the same phys- 
iognomy. And when I hear of the distinction be- 
tween the poet and the thinker I really see no dif- 
ference at all, for the poet is really such by dint of 
superior vision, by dint of a more deep serene vi- 
sion, and he is a poet solely in virtue of that. Thus 
I can well understand how the Duke of Marlbor- 
ough once declared that all his acquaintance with 
the history of England was owing to Shakespeare. 
One can understand it, I say, for Shakespeare ar- 
rived at more of the meaning of history than many 
books written on history could have done. His in- 
tellect seized at once what was the proper object of 
historical interest, and put it down there as the 
leading incident of his play. The trace of intellect 
is more legible in Shakespeare than in any other 
writer. Bacon, indeed, was great, but not to be 
compared with Shakespeare. He not only sees the 
object but sees through it, sympathizes with it, and 
makes it his own. Let us look into the scheme of 
his works, the play of Hamlet, for instance. Goethe 



HIS UNCONSCIOUSNESS 157 

found out, and has really made plausible to bis 
readers, all sorts of barmonies in the structure of 
bis plays with the nature of things, and we have 
realized in this way all that could be demanded of 
him. And what is still more excellent, I am sure 
that Shakespeare himself had no conception at all 
of any such meaning in his poem ; he had no 
scheme of the kind. He would just look into the 
story, his noble mind, the serene depth of it, would 
look in on it as it was by nature, with a sort of 
noble instinct, and in no other way. If he had 
written a criticism upon it he would not at all have 
said what Goethe said about it. And thus when we 
hear of so much said of the art of any great writer 
it is not art at all, it is properly nature. It is not 
kuown to the author himself, but is the instinctive 
behest of his mind. This all-producing earth knows 
not the symmetry of the oak which springs from 
it. It is all beautiful, not a branch is out of its 
place, all is symmetry there ; but the earth has it- 
self no conception of it, and produced it solely by 
the virtue that was in itself. So is the case with 
Homer ; and then critics slip in in the rear of these 
men and mark down the practice they followed, and 
prescribe it to others for imitation, forgetting that 
the very thing to be prescribed is the healthy mind 
of these men, which of itself knows what to put 
down and what to omit in the beautiful sympathy 
of brotherhood with their subject, but not how to 



158 HIS MORALS 

follow certain prescribed rules about beginning in 
the middle, end, or beginning of the subject, and 
other rules of that sort. 

I have generally found that morals in a man are 
the counterpart of the intellect that is in him. In 
fact, morality is the noblest force in his mind, the 
soul of his soul, and must lie at the root of all the 
great things he could utter. In Shakespeare, then, 
there are always the noblest sympathies, no sectari- 
anism, no cruelty, no narrowness, no vain egotism ; 
he is the best illustration we could have of what I 
am always talking about, consciousness and uncon- 
sciousness. The things great and deep in him he 
seems to have no notion of at all. Occasionally we 
have certain magniloquent passages which at this day 
we can scarcely understand, often bombastic, vastly 
inferior to his ordinary compositions, and these he 
seems to have imagined extraordinarily great ; but, 
in general, there is a fervent sincerity in any matter 
he undertakes, by which one sees at once as through 
a window into the beautiful greatness of the soul of 
man. And as to his life, what a beautiful life was 
that, amid trials enough to break the heart of any 
other man. Poverty, and a mean poor destiny, 
which if he were an ambitious man would have 
driven him mad, but he would not suffer himself to 
be subdued by it. And it was fortunate for us. 
If he had been suffered to live quietly in Warwick- 
shire his mind was so rich in itself he w T ould have 



HIS MOTIVE AND METHOD 159 

found such " sermons in stones and good in every- 
thing" that he would probably not have troubled 
the world at all with his productions. It is thus 
that in all departments of thought an accidental 
thing, the action of accident, becomes often of the 
greatest importance. For the greatest man is al- 
ways a quiet man by nature, we are sure not to find 
greatness in a prurient noisy man. Thus Shakes- 
peare at first lived, running about the woods in his, 
youth, together witb, as we find by dim traditions, 
all the wild frolic of that age and place. Stealing 
deer and the like feats of ebullient buoyancy, till 
distress sends him to London to write his immor- 
tal plays there ! And I will here, before conclud- 
ing my remarks on Shakespeare, add a few words 
on the conditions under which all human things are 
to be written. We must say that what the critics 
talk about, the harmony of the poet's purpose is not 
true. In Shakespeare's plays genius is under fet- 
ters, he has in general taken some old story and 
used that for the subject of his play, with the mere 
purpose to gather an audience to the Bankside The- 
atre ; this was the only problem he had to resolve, 
Nature and his own noble mind did the rest. In 
consequence of this we find in some of his pieces 
many things vague and quite unsatisfactory, and 
are unable to discover any significance about them. 
but ever and anon we see a burst of truth, and are 
forced to exclaim, iv Yes, that is true ! " That is 



160 JOHN KNOX 

the case with the delineation of human feelings in 
every age. 

I shall now very reluctantly leave Shakespeare, 
and direct your notice to another great man, very 
different from Shakespeare — John Knox. He and 
Shakespeare lived in the same age ; he was, indeed, 
sixty years old when Shakespeare was born, but, at 
any rate, both lived in the same age together. Of 
^him it may be said, that if Shakespeare was the 
most giant-like man, and the highest of poets, John 
Knox seems, if one knew him rightly, to have been 
as entirely destitute of immorality as Shakespeare 
was of prose. 

I cannot, however, think that he is to be com- 
pared with Luther, as some of the Germans in these 
days have done, who have set him even above 
Luther ; struck with the great veracity of Knox. 
Luther would have been a great man in other things 
besides the Beformation ; a great, substantial, happy 
man, who must have excelled in whatever matter he 
undertook. Knox had not that faculty, but simply 
this, of standing entirely upon truth ; it is not that 
his sincerity is known to him to be sincerity, but it 
arises from a sense of the impossibility of any other 
procedure. He has been greatly abused by many 
persons for his extremely rough and uncourteous 
behavior, for he had a terrible piece of work to do. 
He has been even represented as struggling for a 
mere whim of his own, regardless altogether of other 



HIS EARLY EXPERIENCE 161 

things. But that charge is not true, and as to that 
moral rigor of his, it is the great thing after all : 
given a sincere man, you have given a thing worth 
attending to. Since sincerity, what is it but a di- 
vorce from earth and earthly feelings ? The sun, 
which shines upon the earth, and seems to touch it, 
does not touch the earth at all. So the man who is 
free of earth is the only one that can maintain the 
great truths of existence, not by an ill-natured talk- 
ing forever about truth, but it is he who does the 
truth. And this is a great and notable object to be 
attended to, for that is the very character of Knox. 
He was called out to free a people from dark super- 
stitions and degradations into life and order. It is 
very notable that at first he had no idea of being a 
reformer, although he had a clear sound view that 
Protestantism must be the true religion, and the 
Catholic religion false. Though a monk, he deter- 
mined now to have nothing to do with Catholicism, 
and he withdrew from all prominence in the world 
until he had reached the age of forty-three, an age 
of quietude and composure. When he was besieged 
in the Castle of St. Andrew's along with his master, 
whose children he educated, he had many confer- 
ences with his master's chaplain. The latter, having 
first consulted with the people, who were anxious to 
hoar Knox preach too, suddenly addressed him from 
the pulpit, saying that " it was not right for him to 
sit still when great things were to be spoken ; that 
11 



162 HIS CONSTANCY 

the harvest was great, but the laborers were few ; 
that he (the chaplain) was not so great a man as 
Knox, and that all were desirous to hear the ]atter ; 
is it not so, brethren ? " he asked, to which they 
assented. Knox then had to get into the pulpit, 
trembling, with a pale face, and finally he burst into 
tears, and came down, not having been able to say 
a word. 

From this time he wandered about, resisting the 
destiny that was for him, until at last he dared not 
refuse any more. It was a fiery kind of baptism 
that initiated him. He had become a preacher not 
three months, when the castle surrendered, and they 
were all taken prisoners and worked as galley slaves 
on the river Loire, confined for life there. The 
chiefs of the conspirators were put in prison ; this 
was the year forty-seven or forty-nine, from which 
his whole life forward was as a battle. Seven years 
after we find him escaping from the French galleys, 
when he came to England. 

In Luther we often see an overshadowing of 
despair, and especially towards the end of his life, 
when he describes himself as "heartily sick of ex- 
istence, and most desirous that his Master would 
call him to his rest." Another time he laments 
the hopelessness of Protestantism, and says that all 
sects will rise up at last in the day of judgment. 
But there never was anything like this in Knox ; 
he never gave up, even in the water of the Loire. 



HIS SENSE OF HUMOR 163 

They were ordered to hear mass ; but though they 
went to hear it, they could not be prevented from 
putting on their caps during it. Their Virgin 
Mary was once brought for some kind of reverence 
to the people in the galley, and it was handed to 
Knox first ; but he saw nothing there but a painted 
piece of wood — a "peuted bredd," as he called it in 
his Scotch dialect ; and on their pressing him, he 
threw it into the water, saying that " the Virgin, 
being wooden, would swim." There was a great 
deal of humor in Knox, as bright a humor as in 
Chaucer, expressed in his own quaint Scotch. He 
wrote the History of the Scotch Reformation. By 
far better than any other history is that autobiog- 
raphy of his. Above all, there is in him a genuine 
natural rusticity, a decided earnestness of purpose ; 
the good nature and humor appear in a very strik- 
ing way, not as a sneer altogether, but as real de- 
light at seeing ludicrous objects. Thus, when he 
describes the two archbishops quarrelling, no doubt 
he was delighted to see the disgrace it brought on 
their church ; but he was chiefly excited by the 
really ludicrous spectacle of rochets flying about 
and vestments torn, and the struggle each made to 
overturn the other. 

The sum of the objections made to Knox, and 
which have obfuscated and depressed his memory 
for centuries, seems to be his intolerance ; that he 
wanted tolerance and all the qualities that follow 



164 HIS INTOLERANCE AND HUDENESS 

out of it ; and particularly for his rude, brutal way 
of speaking to Queen Mary. Now, I confess that 
when I came to read these very speeches, my opin- 
ion of these charges was that they are quite un- 
deserved. It was quite impossible for any man to 
do Knox's functions and be civil too ; he had either 
to be uncivil, or to give up Scotland and Protes- 
tantism altogether. Mary wanted to make of Scot- 
land a mere shooting-ground for her uncles, the 
Guises. In many respects she seems to have been 
a weak, light-headed woman, and Knox, in the ques- 
tion between civility and duty, was bound to stand 
by the latter and not by the former ; but his in- 
civility was not at all rude or brutal ; it was noth- 
ing more than the statement of what was necessary 
to be done. It was unfortunate, too, for him that 
the sovereign was a woman, that he had not a man 
to deal with ; there would have been less commis- 
eration then, and he would not have been afraid to 
speak in the same way to a man if one had been 
there. It was truly said of him on his death-bed 
by the Earl of Morton : " There he lies that never 
feared the face of man ! " When I look at what he 
had to do ; at the wild people, the barbarous horde 
he found it ; and how he left it a quiet, civilized 
one, and how he brought down into the meanest 
minds, into every hut of Scotland, the greatest 
thoughts that ever were in the mind of man, I can- 
not but admire him, and expect all honest people to 



MILTON 165 

do the same, however they may differ from him in 
opinion. We cannot expect all men's opinions to 
tally with our own. It ought to be enough for us 
that there is sincerity of belief, of conviction. 

The third person to whom I have to direct your 
attention is Milton. He lived a century from Knox, 
and he may be considered as a summing up, com- 
posed, as it were, of the two — of Shakespeare and 
Knox. As to Shakespeare, one does not find what 
religion he was of ; an universal believer, impressed 
with many things which may be called religious ; 
having reverence for everything that bore the mark 
of the Deity, but of no particular sect, not particular- 
ly Protestant more than Catholic. But Milton was 
altogether sectarian — a Presbyterian, one might say. 
He got his knowledge out of Knox, for Knox's in- 
fluence was not confined to Scotland. It was plant- 
ed there at first, and continued growing in his own 
country till it filled it, and then it spread itself in- 
to England, working great events, and finally, after 
causing the quarrel between Scotland and Charles 
I., it ended in the Bevolution of 1688, an event the 
effects of which benefit England to this day. 

Milton learned much of Knox. He was partly 
the religious philosopher, partly the poet, for it 
must be a little mind that cannot see that he was a 
poet— one of the wild Saxon mind, full of deep re- 
ligious melody that sounds like cathedral music. 
However, he must not be ranked with Shakespeare. 



166 THE PARADISE LOST 

He stands relative to Shakespeare as Tasso or 
Ariosto does to Dante, as Virgil to Homer. He is 
conscious of writing an epic, and of being the great 
man he is. No great man ever felt so great a 
consciousness as Milton. That' consciousness was 
the measure of his greatness ; he was not one of 
those who reach into actual contact with the deep 
fountain of greatness. His " Paradise Lost " is not 
an epic in its composition as Shakespeare's utter- 
ances are epic. It does not come out of the heart 
of things ; he hadn't it lying there to pour it out in 
one gush ; it seems rather to have been welded to- 
gether afterward. His sympathies with things are 
much narrower than Shakespeare's — too sectarian. 
In universality of mind there is no hatred ; it doubt- 
less rejects what is displeasing, but not in hatred 
for it. Everything has a right to exist. Shake- 
speare was not polemical : Milton was polemical al- 
together. 

Milton's disquisitions on these subjects are quite 
wearisome to us now. "Paradise Lost" is a very 
ambitious poem, a great picture painted on huge 
canvas ; but it is not so great a thing as to con- 
centrate our minds upon the deep things within 
ourselves as Dante does, to show what a beautiful 
thing the life of man is ; it is to travel with paved 
streets beside us rather than lakes of fire. This 
Dante has done, and Milton not. There is no life 
in Milton's characters. Adam and Eve are beautiful, 



167 



graceful objects, but no one has breathed the Pyg- 
malion life into them ; they remain cold statues. 
Milton's sympathies were with things rather than 
with men, the scenery and phenomena of nature, 
the trim gardens, the burning lake ; but as for the 
phenomena of the mind, he was not able to see 
them. He has no delineations of mind except 
Satan, of which we may say that Satan was his own 
character, the black side of it. I wish, however, to 
be understood not to speak at all in disparagement 
of Milton ; far from that. 

In our next lecture we shall notice French litera- 
ture. 



LECTURE IX. 

THIRD PERIOD 

Voltaire— The French— Scepticism— From Rabelais 
to Rousseau. 

Of this Lecture no record exists. 



LECTURE X. 

June 1st 

THIRD PERIOD— Continued 

Eighteenth Century in England— Whitfield— Swift 
—Sterne — Johnson— Hume. 

In our lecture of this day we shall cast an eye upon 
Ed gland during the eighteenth century, a period of 
wide consequence to us, and therefore most inter- 
esting to us now in the nineteenth century. 

In our last lecture we saw the melancholy phe- 
nomenon of a system of beliefs which had grown 
up for 1,800 years, and had formed during that pe- 
riod great landmarks of the thought of man, crum- 
bling down at last, and dissolving itself in suicidal 
ruin ; and we saw one of the most remarkable na- 
tions of men engaged in destroying : nothing grow- 
ing in the great seed-field of time, so that well 
might Goethe say, " My inheritance, how bare ! 
Time, how bare ! " For everything man does is as 
seed cast into a seed-field, and there it grows on 
forever. But the French sowed nothing. Voltaire, 
on the contrary, casting firebrands among the dry 



170 FRENCH SCEPTICISM 

leaves, produced the combustion we shall notice by 
and by. Of Voltaire himself we could make but 
little — a man of a great vivacity of mind, the great- 
est acuteness, presenting most brilliant coruscations 
of genius, but destitute of depth, scattering himself 
abroad upon all subjects, but in great things doing 
nothing except to canker and destroy. This being 
once conceived, that the people had fallen into scep- 
ticism, we can imagine that all other provinces of 
thought were quite sure of being cultivated in the 
same unfruitful desert manner — politics, for in- 
stance. In France, too, appeared Mably, Monte- 
squieu, and an innumerable host of other writers of 
the same sort, finally summed up in the Contrat 
Social of Rousseau. The only use to which they put 
the intellect was not to look outwardly upon nature, 
and love or hate as circumstances required, but to 
inquire why the thing was there at all, and to ac- 
count for it and argue about it. 

So it was in England too, and in all European 
countries. The two great features of French intel- 
lect were formalism and scepticism. These became 
the leading intellectual features of all the nations of 
that century. French literature got itself estab- 
lished in all countries. One of the shallowest things 
that has ever existed, it never told man anything ; 
there never was any message it had to deliver him. 
But, on the other hand, it was the most logically 
precise of all ; it stood on , established rules, and 



REIGN OF QUACKERY 171 

was the best calculated to make its way among na- 
tions. Even in Germany it became so popular that, 
for a time, it actually seemed to have extirpated the 
public mind. In England too, and in Spain, where 
it was introduced by the Bourbon sovereigns, and 
where the beautiful literature of Cervantes dwindled 
away before it, so as never to have recovered itself 
since. It is not because any particular doctrine is 
questioned, but because society gets unbelieving al- 
together, and faith gets dwindled altogether into 
mere chimeras, so that, to an observer, it might be 
doubtful whether the whole earth were not hypo- 
thetical. He sees the quack established ; he sees 
truth trodden down to the earth everywhere around 
him ; in his own office he sees quackery at work, 
and that part of it which is done by quackery is 
done better than all the rest ; till at last he, too, 
concludes in favor of this order of things, and gets 
himself enrolled among this miserable set, eager af- 
ter profit, and of no belief except the belief always 
held among such persons, that Money will buy mon- 
ey's worth, and that Pleasure is pleasant. But woe 
to that land and its people if, for what they do, they 
expect payment at all times ! It is bitter to see. 
Such times are extremely painful— as it were, the 
winter weather of the state. Woe to the state if 
there comes no spring ! All men will suffer from it 
with confusion in the very heart of them. 

In England this baneful spirit was not so deep as 



172 THE REIGN OF POLEMICS 

in France, and for several reasons. One was that 
their nature, the Teutonic nature, is much slower 
than the French ; much deeper, not so absorbed 
at any time us the French has been, whether with 
scepticism or more worthy things. Another reason 
was that England was a Protestant, free country, 
and, as contra-distinguished from France, a well- 
regulated country. An Englishman, too, will moder- 
ate his opinions, and at any time keep them to him- 
self. We find many simply trusting themselves to 
the examination of the great things of the world, 
but notwithstanding barely keeping out of this dark 
region of complete scepticism, and doing many 
things hearty and manly in spite of that. In France, 
on the contrary, all things were in an extremely bad 
state, much depending on Jesuits. In the eigh- 
teenth century, however — here with us a century of 
disputation, if not of complete unbelief — a century 
of contrariety, there was nothing to be found but 
argument everywhere. 

Never before was there so much argument, liter- 
ary argument in particular. All things were brought 
down to the one category of argument ; from con- 
troversies about Dr. Sacheverell, through the whole 
range of metaphysics, up to the Divine legation of 
Moses, essays on miracles, and the like, by men like 
Hume and Paley, and down to the writers of our 
own time. Nichols' Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury, an interesting book, offers a curious picture of 



SILENCE 173 

this state of things. Nine-tenths of his anecdotes are 
about the Church and Church questions, as if the 
human intellect had nothing to do but with polem- 
ics. Now, though I do all honor to logic in its 
place, I will venture to say that such subjects as 
these, high subjects of faith in religion, faith in 
polity, are as good as lost if there be no other way 
than b} r logic to take them up. I must impress upon 
your minds the words of Goethe : " The highest is 
not capable of being spoken outwards at all." Ever 
has deep secrecy been observed in sacred things. 
Pompey could not understand this, when he sought 
to discover what veiled thing that was in the temple 
of Jerusalem. 

Among the Egyptians, too, there was the veiled 
figure of Sais, not to be looked upon. And secrecy 
denotes importance in much lower things that that. 
A man who has no secrecy in him is still regarded 
as having no kind of sense in him for apprehending 
whatever is greatest and best in the world ! I ad- 
mire much that inscription in the Swiss gardens, 
" Speech is silvern, silence is golden ! " After speech 
has done its best, silence has to include all that 
speech has forgotten or cannot express. Speech is 
of time, of to-day ; eternity is silent. All great things 
are silent. Whenever they get to be debated on by 
logic, they are as good as lost. It is impossible to 
prove faith or morality by speech at all, for logic, if 
we consider it, what does it mean? It pretends to 



174 LOGIC AND BELIEF 

enforce men to adopt a belief, and yet there is no 
such constraint possible in that way. Looking at the 
whole circle of things summoned before logic, I do 
not find more than one single object taken in by 
logic entirely, and that is Euclid's Elements. In 
other respects logic, speaking accurately, can do no 
more than define to others what it is you believe ; 
and when you have so done, a mind made like yours, 
which sees that you believe, will perhaps believe 
also. But in mathematics, where things are called 
by certain simple and authorized designations, there 
alone is it final, as that two and two make four, the 
angle in a semicircle is a right angle. But where 
men are not even agreed on the meaning of the ap- 
pellations, the case is different, as, for instance, Vir- 
tue is utility, — try that. In every different mind 
there will be a different meaning of the words virtue 
and utility. Let them state the belief as they can, 
but not attempt to confine it in the narrow bounds 
of logic. In spite of early training, I never do see 
sorites of logic hanging together, put in regular 
order, but I conclude that it is going to end in some 
niaiserie, in some miserable delusion. 

However imperfect the literature of England was 
at this period, its spirit was never greater. It did 
great things, it built great towns, Birmingham and 
Liverpool, Cyclopean workshops, and ships. There 
was sincerity there at least. Richard Arkwright, 
for instance, who invented the spinning jennies, he 



WHITFIELD 175 

was a sincere man. Not as in France. Watt, too, 
was evidently sincere in that province of activity. 
Another singular symptom of the earnestness of the 
period was that thing we call Methodism. It seems 
to have merely gathered up a number of barren for- 
mulas, with little inspiration in it at first, as it ex- 
hibited itself in the rude hearts of the common peo- 
ple. Much of its success was due to Whitfield, who 
must have been a man with great things in his heart. 
He had many dark contests with the spirit of denial 
that lay about him before he called his genius forth 
into action. All the logic in him was poor and trifling 
compared to the fire that was in him, unequalled 
since Peter the Hermit. First he went to Bristol, 
and preached to the neighboring coal miners, who 
were all heathens yet, but he preached to them till 
he saw, as he tells us, " their black cheeks seamed 
with white tears." He came to Scotland, and got 
money there to convert the heathen. This was a 
great- thing to do, considering the hard, thrifty, cold 
character of the nation. He came to Glasgow and 
preached, and talked about the Indians and their 
perishing state ; would they hesitate to contribute 
of their goods to rescue this poor people ? And thus 
he warmed the icy people into a flame, insomuch 
that, not having money enough by them, they ran 
home for more, and brought even blankets, farm 
stuff, hams, etc., to the church, and piled them in a 
heap there ! This was a remarkable fact, whether it 



176 DRYDEN AND ADDISON 

were the work of a good spirit, or of the devil. It 
is wonderful that it did not strike Hume more when 
he heard Whitfield on the Calton Hill. 

When we look at the literature of the times, we 
see little of that spirit which is to be sought for in 
the steam engines. We have no time to mention 
Dry den, a great poet put down in the worst of 
times, and thus a formalist ; a man whose soul was 
no longer iu contact with anything he got to deline- 
ate ; for ever thinking of the effect he was to pro- 
duce on the court, and for this end he adopted 
French plays as the model of his own. He, I say, 
became a formalist, instead of quietly and silently 
delineating the thought that was in him. But 
Dryden must not be censured for it ; his poverty 
was the cause, not his will. He changed to be a 
Roman Catholic at last. A man of immense in- 
tellect ; it is displayed in his translation, for ex- 
ample, of the JEneid, which contains many beauti- 
ful and sounding things. 

In Queen Anne's time, after that most disgrace- 
ful class of people — King Charles' people — had 
passed away, there appeared the milder kind of un- 
belief. Complete formalism is the characteristic of 
Queen Anne's reign. But, amid all this, it is 
strange how many beautiful indications there are of 
better things, how many truths were said. Addison 
was a mere lay preacher, completely bound up in 
formalism, but he did get to say many a true thing 



STEELE, SWIFT 177 

in his generation ; an instance of one formal man 
doing great things. Steele had infinitely more 
naivete, but he was only a fellow-soldier of Addison, 
to whom he subordinated himself more than was 
necessary. It is a cold vote in Addison's favor that 
one gives. 

By far the greatest man of that time, I think, was 
Jonathan Swift : Dean Swift, a man entirely de- 
prived of his natural nourishment, but of great 
robustness ; of genuine Saxon mind, not without a 
feeling of reverence, though, from circumstances, it 
did not awaken in him, for he got unhappily, at the 
outset, into the Church, not haying any vocation for 
it. It is curious to see him arranging, as it were, a 
little religion to himself. Some man found him one 
day giving prayers to his servants in a kind of 
secret manner, which he did, it seems, every morn- 
ing, for he was determined, at any rate, to get out 
of cant ; but he was a kind of cultivated heathen, 
no Christianity in him. He saw himself in a world 
of confusion and falsehood. No eyes were clearer 
to see into it than his. He was great from being of 
acrid temperament : paiufully sharp nerves in body 
as well as soul, for he was constantly ailing, and his 
mind, at the same time, was soured with indignation 
at what he saw around him. He took up therefore, 
what was fittest for him, namely, sarcasm, and he 
carried it quite to an epic pitch. There is some- 
thing great and fearful in his irony, for it is not 
12 



178 swift's philantropiiy 

always used for effect, or designedly to depreciate. 
There seems often to be a sympathy in it with the 
thing he satirizes ; occasionally it was even impos- 
sible for him so to laugh at any object without a 
sympathy with it, a sort of love for it ; the same 
love as Cervantes universally shows for his own 
objects of merit. In his conduct, there is much 
that is sad and tragic, highly blameable ; but I can- 
not credit all that is said of his cruel unfeeling dis- 
sipation. There are many circumstances to show 
that by nature he was one of the truest of men, of 
great pity for his fellow-men. For example, we 
read that he set up banks for the poor Irish lit his 
neighborhood, and required nothing of them but 
that they should keep their word with him, when 
they came to borrow. " Take your own time," he 
said, " but don't come back if you fail to keep the 
time you tell me." And if they had failed, he would 
tell them, " Come no more to me, if you have not so 
much method as to keep your time ; if you cannot 
keep your word, what are you fit for?" All this 
proves him to have been a man of much affection, 
but too impatient of others' infirmities. But none 
of us can have any idea of the bitter misery which 
lay in him ; given up to ambition, confusion, and 
discontent. He fell into fatalism at last, and mad- 
ness, that was the end of it. The death of Swift 
was one of the awfullest ; he knew his madness to 
be coming. A little before his death he saw a tree 






179 



withered at the top, and he said that, "like that 
tree, he, too, was dying at the top." He was well 
called by Johnson a driveller and a show, a stern 
lesson to ambitious people. 

Another man of much the same way of thinking, 
and very well deserving notice, was Laurence Sterne. 
In him also there was a great quantity of good 
struggling through the superficial evil. He terribly 
failed in the discharge of his duties, still, we must 
admire in him that sportive kind of geniality and 
affection, still a son of our common mother, not 
cased up in buckram formulas as the other writers 
were, clinging to forms, and not touching realities. 
And, much as has been said against him, we cannot 
help feeling his immense love for things around 
him ; so that we may say of him, as of Magdalen, 
" much is forgiven him, because he loved much." 
A good simple being after all. 

I have nothing at all, in these limits, to say of 
Pope. It is no use to decide the disputed question 
as to whether he were a poet or not, in the strict 
sense of the term ; in any case, his was one of the 
finest heads ever known, full of deep sayings, ut- 
tered in the shape of couplets — rhymed couplets. 

The two persons who exercised the most remark- 
able influences upon things during the eighteenth 
century were, unquestionably, Samuel Johnson and 
David Hume : two summits of a great set of in- 
fluences, two opposite poles of it — the one a puller 



180 JOHNSON 

down of magnificent, far-reaching thoughts ; the 
other, most excellent, serious, and a great conserva- 
tive. 

Samuel Johnson, in some respects, stood entirely 
alone in Europe. In those years there was no one 
in Europe- Jike him. For example, the defenders of 
what existed in France were men who did nothing 
but mischief by their falsehoods and insincerity of 
all kinds. 

Johnson was a large-minded man, an entirely sin- 
cere and honest man. Whatever may be our differ- 
ences of opinion is here entirely insignificant ; he 
must inevitably be regarded as the brother of all 
honest men. One who held this truth among the 
insincerities that lay around him, that, after all, 
"life was true yet," and he was a man to hold by 
that truth, and cling to it in the general shipwreck 
on the sea of Eternity. All would be over with 
him without it ; he knew that, and acted up to it. 
Hardly has any man ever influenced more an exist- 
ing state of things. He produced in England that 
resistance to the French Revolution, commonly 
called Pittism, by demonstrating its necessity in 
the most perfect sincerity of heart. A man whose 
life was, in the highest degree, miserable ; hardly 
any man, not even Swift, suffered so much as John- 
son in the first part of his life. He was a " much en- 
during man ! " A man of a most unhealthy body, 
for ever sick and ailing. When he was at Oxford, 



HIS HAEDSHIPS AND HEROISM 181 

a sizar there, so great was his poverty that he had 
no shoes to his feet, and used to walk about putting 
his bare feet into the mud of the streets. A chari- 
table man, seeing this, put a pair of shoes at his 
door for him, but this irritated Johnson as a reflec- 
tion on his poverty, and he flung them out of win- 
dow, rather than use them. Then he fell sick over 
and over again. Those about him regarded him as 
a man that had gone mad, and was more fit for Bed- 
lam than anything else. 

After he left Oxford, he tried to be a schoolmas- 
ter, but, failing in that, came to London to try his 
fortune there. There he lived on fourpence a day, 
sometimes having no home, and reduced to sleep on 
bulks and steps, at other times to .stay in cellars. 
And I must regard him as one of the greatest heroes, 
since he was able to keep himself erect amid all that 
distress : he shook it from him as the lion shakes 
the dewdrops from his mane ! He had no notion of 
becoming a great character at all, he only tried not 
to be killed with starvation ! And though it is 
mournful to think that a man of the greatest heart 
should have suffered so much, we must consider that 
this suffering produced that enterprise in him, and 
at last he did get something to do ; his object was 
not to go about seeking to know the reasons of 
things in a world where there is much to be done, 
little to be known ; for the great thing, above all 
others, is what a man can do in this world ! 



182 JOHNSON AND BOSWELL 

There is not such a cheering spectacle in the 
eighteenth century anywhere as Samuel Johnson. 
He contrived to be devout in it, he had a belief and 
held by it ; a genuine inspired man. And it is a 
great thing to think that Johnson had one who could 
appreciate him ; anyone must love poor Boswell, 
who (not fixing his eyes on the vain and stupid 
things in " Bozzy's " character) remarks that beau- 
tiful reverence and attachment he had for Johnson, 
putting them side by side, this great mass of a 
plebeian and this other conceited Scotch character : 
full of the absurd pretensions of my country's gen- 
tlemen, noting down and treasuring with reverence 
the sayings and anecdotes of this great, shaggy, 
dusty pedagogue. And really, he has made of these 
things a book, which is a most striking book, and 
likely to survive long after him ; a kind of epic 
poem, by which Johnson must long continue in the 
first ranks of English biography. 

But we must now come to a very different per- 
sonage, Hume. Hume was born in the same year 
with Johnson, whom he so little resembles. He, 
too, is deserving to be looked at. Very nearly of 
Johnson's magnitude, and quite as sincere, but of a 
far duller kind of sense. His eye, unlike Johnson's, 
was not open to faith ; yet he was of a noble per- 
severence, a silent strength, and he showed it in 
his very complicated life, as it lay before him. He 
could not go into commerce, for his habits as the 



HUME 183 

son of a gentleman were averse to it. Yet his pa- 
rents, wishing him to make money in some way, 
he was set to various things, and finally sent to 
Bristol to be a merchant. But, after trying and 
struggling with it for two years, he found he could 
not go on, and he felt a strong thirst to prosecute 
the cultivation of learning, so that he abandoned the 
other for that. 

He tried to get appointed a professor in the 
University of Edinburgh, but they would not have 
him, so he retired to live upon sixty pounds a year 
in a small town in Brittany, called La Fleche, where 
he began writing books, and thus got distinguished. 
He was not at any time patronized by any consider- 
able class of persons, though latterly he was noticed 
by a certain class. The rich people did look after 
him at last, but a general recognition in his day he 
never got. His chief work, the History of England, 
failed to get buyers. He bore it all like a stoic, 
like a heroic, silent man as he was, and then pro- 
ceeded calmly to the next thing he had to do. I 
have heard old people, who have remembered Hume 
well, speak of his great good humor under trials, 
the quiet strength of it, the very converse in this of 
Dr. Johnson, whose coarseness was equally strong 
with his heroism. Then, as to his methodicalness, 
no man ever had a larger view than Hume ; he 
always knows where to begin and end. In his his- 
tory he frequently rises, though a cold man natu- 



184 ROBERTSON 

rally, into a kind of epic height as he proceeds. His 
description of the Commonwealth, for example, 
where all is delineated as with a crayon ; one sees 
there his large mind, moreover, not without its 
harmonies. As to his scepticism, that is perfectly 
transcendental, working itself out to the very end. 
He starts with Locke's Essay, thinking, as was then 
generally thought, that logic is the only way to the 
truth. He began with this, and went on ; in the 
end he exhibited to the world his conclusion, that 
there was nothing at all credible or demonstrable, 
the only thing certain to him being that he himself 
existed and sat there, and that there were some 
species of things in his own brain. Any other man 
to him was only a spectrum, not a reality. Now it 
was right that this should be published, for if that 
were all that lay in scepticism, the making that 
known was extremely beneficial to us ; he did us 
great service in that ; then all would see what was 
in it, and accordingly would give up the unprofita- 
ble employment of spinning cobwebs of logic in 
their brain — no one would go on spinning them 
much longer. 

Hume, too, is very remarkable as one of the three 
historians we have produced, for his history, an 
able work for the time, shows far more insight than 
either Robertson or Gibbon. Robertson was, in 
fact, as Johnson thinks him, a shallow man. In 
his conversation with Boswell about him, we have 



GIBBON 185 

Johnson always contradicting Kobertson ; yet there 
was a power of arrangement in Kobertson : no one 
knew better where to begin a story and where to 
stop. This was the greatest quality in him, that 
and a soft sleek style. On the whole, he was merely 
a politician, open to the common objection to all 
the three, that total want of belief ; and worse in 
Robertson, a minister of the Gospel, preaching, or 
pretending to preach. A poor notion of moral 
motives he must have had ; in his description of 
Knox, for instance, he can divine no better motive 
for him than a miserable hunger, love of plunder, 
and the influence of money ; and such was Hume's 
view also ! The same is remarkable of Gibbon in a 
still more contemptible way — a greater historian 
than Robertson, but not so great as Hume. With, 
all his swagger and bombast, no man ever gave a 
more futile account of human things than he has 
done of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire ; 
assigning no profound cause for these phenomena, 
nothing but diseased nerves, and all sorts of miser- 
able motives, to the actors in them. 

So that the world seemed then to present one 
huge imbroglio of quackery, and men of nobleness 
could only despise and sneer at it. 

On Friday next (not Monday) we shall resume 
this discussion, and shall remark the downfall and 
consummation of scepticism ; for, thank God, its 
time was short. 



LECTURE XI. 

Friday, June 8th 

THIRD PERIOD— Continued 

Consummation op Scepticism — Wertherism — The 
French Revolution. 

We traced the history of scepticism in literature in 
our last lecture down to David Hume, the greatest 
of all the writers of his time, and in some respects 
the worthiest. To-day we shall delineate the con- 
summation of scepticism. 

It is very strange to look at scepticism in con- 
trast with a thing that preceded it ; to contrast, for 
example, David Hume with Dante, two characters 
distant by five centuries from one another, two of 
the greatest minds in their respective departments 
(the mind of both was to do the best that could be 
done in their existing circumstances) ; to contrast 
them, I say, and see what Dante made of it and 
what Hume made of it. 

Dante saw a solemn law in the universe, pointing 
out his destiny with an awful and beautiful cer- 
tainty, and he held to it. Hume could see nothing 



SCEPTICISM 187 

in the universe but confusion, and he was certain 
of nothing but his own existence ; yet he had in- 
stincts which were infinitely more true than the 
logical part of him, and so he kept himself quiet 
in the middle of it all, and did no harm to anyone ; 
for as to his books, he believed that they were true, 
and therefore to publish them he was bound — bound 
to do what seemed right to him. He had no other 
business for his intellect than this, and, moreover, 
as I have observed, in publishing them he did a 
useful service for humanity. 

But scepticism, however much called for at that 
time, particular!}' in France, cannot be considered 
other than a disease of the mind ; a fatal condition 
to be in, it seems to me, or at best useful only as a 
means to get at knowledge. For the thing is, not 
to find out what is not true, but what is true. Surely 
that is the real design of man's intelligence ! But as 
to this overspreading our whole mind with logic, it 
was altogether a false and unwarranted attempt, 
considering logic as the only means to attain to 
truth, and that things did not exist at all except 
someone stood up and could mark the place that 
they occupied in the world ; forgetting that it is 
always great things that do not speak at all. If a 
truth must not be believed except demonstrable by 
logic, we had better go away without it altogether. 

And it was not only the disbelievers in religion 
that were sceptic at that time ; but the whole sys- 



188 THEORIES 

tern of mind was sceptic. The defenders of Chris- 
tianity were sceptic, too, for ever trying to prove 
the truth of their doctrines by logical evidences. 
What is the use of attempting to prove motion ? 
The philosopher was right who got up and began 
to walk instead. So with religion. It may seem a 
plausible, but it is a vain attempt to demonstrate by 
logical arguments what must be always unspeakable. 
But this habit had in the eighteenth century over- 
run all the provinces of thought. Nothing but that 
was serviceable or useful in the eyes of that genera- 
tion. An indication of an unhealthy mind, that 
system of trying to make out a theory on every sub- 
ject. It is good, doubtless, that there should al- 
ways be some theory formed, with a view to the ap- 
prehension of a subject, but as for any other view it 
is impossible. For example, there is a kind of 
theory in what we have been following out — what 
we call the history of European culture ; we use it 
for facility of arrangement. But there is a wide 
difference between a theory of this kind and a 
theory by which we profess to account for it, and 
give the reasons for its being there at all. 

Accordingly, there is only one theory (as I ob- 
served at the beginning of these lectures) whieh 
has been most triumphant — that of the planets. 
On no other subject has any other theory succeeded 
so far ; yet even that is not perfect. The astrono- 
mer knows one or two planets, we may say ; but he 



LIMITATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE 189 

does not know what they are, where they are going, 
or whether the solar system is not itself drawn into 
a larger system of the kind. In short, with every 
theory the man who knows something about it 
knows mainly this — that there is much uncertainty 
in it, great darkness about it, extending down to 
infinite deeps ; in a word, that he does not know 
what it is. Let him take the stone, for example — 
the pebble that lies under his feet. He knows that 
it is a stone, broken out of rocks old as the creation ; 
but what that pebble is he knows not ; he knows 
nothing at all afcout that. 

This system of making a theory about everything 
was what we can call an enchanted state of mind. 
That man should be misled ; that he should be de- 
prived of knowing the truth, that this world is a 
reality, and not a huge, confused hypothesis ; that 
he should be deprived of this by the very faculties 
given him to understand it, I can call by no other 
name than enchantment. Everything was placed 
upon the single table of logic ; one could hardly go 
anywhere without meeting some pretentious theory 
or other. Even the very centre of all was brought 
to that level — morals. There was a theory of virtue 
and vice ; duty and the contrary of that. This will 
come to be thought one day an extraordinary sort of 
procedure. When I think of this, it seems to me 
more and more that morality is the very centre of 
the existence of man ; that there is nothing for a man 



190 MORAL SENSE 

but that which it is his duty to do. It is the life, 
the harmonious existence of any man — the good that 
is in him ! No man can know how to account for it ; 
it is the very essence and existence of himself. How- 
ever, in the last century they had a theory for that 
too, by which it was defined to consist in what they 
called sympathies, the necessary attraction subsisting 
between the inclination and the thing to be done ! 
For all spiritual things were to be deduced from 
something visible and material, and thus our mo- 
rality became reduced to our sympathies for others 
and other things. 

This was the doctrine of Adam Smith and of others 
older than Smith, and by him this habit of morality 
had been termed moral sense, the natural relish for 
certain actions ; a sort of palate, by the taste of which 
the nature of anything might be determined. Hume 
considered virtue to be the same as expediency, 
profit ; that all useful things were virtues ; that people 
in old times found the utility of the thing, and met, 
or whether they met not, in any case agreed that 
for the sake of keeping society together, they would 
patronize such things as were useful to one another, 
and consecrate them by some strong sanction, and 
that was the origin of virtue. The most melancholy 
theory ever propounded. In short, it was the highest 
exhibition of scepticism — that total denial of every- 
thing not material, not demonstrable by logic. The 
result was to convince man that he was not of Heaven 



MATERIALISM 191 

— the paltriest conclusion. Tell that to the savage, 
the red man of the forest ; tell him that he is not of 
Heaven, not of God, but a mere thing of matter, and 
he will spurn you in his indignation at the base con- 
clusion. 

Besides morality, everything else was in the same 
state ; all things showed what an unhealthy, poor 
thing the world had become. All was brought down 
to a system of cause and effect ; of one thing push- 
ing another thing on by certain laws of physics, 
gravitation, a visible, material thing of shoving. A 
dim, huge, immeasurable steam engine they had 
made of this world, and, as Jean Paul says, " Heaven 
became a gas, God a force, the second world . a 
grave." We cannot understand how this delusion 
could have become so general ; all men thinking in 
so deplorable a manner, and looking down in con- 
tempt on those who had gone before them. But it 
was working itself out toward issues beneficial for 
us all. Voltaire and Kousseau became, in the end, 
triumphant over everything ; destroying, but sub- 
stituting nothing ; attacking Jesuitism, and imag- 
ining they were doing good by it ; cutting down, 
burning up, because they were applauded for it. 
They had always at their back people to cry out, 
" Well done ! " But these having passed away, and 
error having once been admitted to be erroneous, 
and the world everywhere reduced by them to that 
dire condition, I say that in that huge universe, be- 



192 WERTHER 

come one vast steam engine as it were, the new gen- 
eration that followed must inevitably have found 
their position very difficult, and that it was perfectly 
insupportable for them to be doomed to live in such 
a place of falsehood and chimera. And that was, 
in fact, the case with them, and it led to the second 
great phenomenon we have to notice, the introduc- 
tion of Wertherism. 

Let us first look at the very centre of it, at Werther 
himself. " Werther " is the first book in which there 
is any decided proof of its existence in the European 
mind. " Werther " was written by Goethe in 1775. 
It was a time of a haggard condition, no genuine 
hope in men's minds. All outwards was false : the 
last war, for example, the Seven Years' War, the 
most absurd of wars, undertaken on no public prin- 
ciple, a contest between France and Germany, from 
Frederick the Great wanting to have Silesia, and 
Louis XV. wanting to give Madame de Pompadour 
some influence in the affairs of Europe — and 50,000 
men were shot for that purpose ! Under these cir- 
cumstances Goethe, then of the age of twenty-five, 
wrote this work at Frankfort-on-Maine. A man of 
the liveliest imagination, and one who participated 
deeply in all the influences then going on, not alto- 
gether brought up in scepticism, but, in fact, very 
well acquainted with religious people from his youth, 
and, among them, with a lady named the Fraulein 
von Klettenberg, a follower of Zinzendorf, whom he 



WERTIIERISM 193 

always highly esteemed, and whom he is said to have 
afterward described as the saintly lady in " Wilhelm 
Meister." But, in fact, he studied all sorts of things, 
and this among the rest. And when at last he grew 
into manhood and looked around him on what was 
passing, he was filled with unspeakable sadness, felt 
himself, as it were, flung back on himself, no sym- 
pathies in anyone with his feelings, his aspirations 
treated as chimeras which could not realize them- 
selves at all ; and he brooded with silence long over 
this. He has described it all in a clear manner, a 
beautiful, soft manner. He was destined for a pro- 
fession, to be a lawyer, and though much disinclined 
for it he went accordingly to the University of Leip- 
sic. Here he spent some time, till finally one of the 
scholars, who had been violently attached to the 
bride of another man, put an end to himself in de- 
spair. This gave him the idea of Werther. The 
sense of his own dark state and that of all others 
rushed upon him now more forcibly than ever, and it 
produced this book, the voice of what all men wanted 
to speak at that time, of what oppressed the heads 
of all, and of this young man in particular. It ac- 
cordingly soon became generally read ; it was trans- 
lated into English among other languages. Sixty 
years ago young ladies here were never without all 
sorts of sketches on articles used at their toilettes, 
of Charlotte and Werther, and so on. Goethe him- 
self was in possession of tea - cups made in China 
11 



194 PHILOSOPHY OF WEKTHER 

ornamented with pictures of Charlotte. I suppose 
that the story itself is known to every one of you, yet 
our English version does no justice to the work. It 
was made, I believe, from a French translation, and 
it is altogether unlike the original. There is often 
a sharp tone, a redeeming turn of bitter satire in it, 
but it has become in general wearisome now to young 
people. It was not so in those times. Werther we 
may take to have been Goethe's own character, an 
earnest man, of deep affections, forever meditating 
on the phenomena of this world, and obtaining no 
solution, till at last he goes into sentimentality and 
tries that among other influences. By degrees he 
gets more and more desperate at his imprisonment, 
rages more and more against the evils around him, 
and at length blows his brains out, and ends the novel 
in that way. This was the beginning of the thing 
which immediately afterward was going on through 
all Europe. Only till lately this country knew any- 
thing else, the thing which was not that was accounted 
no better than confusion and delusion. And they 
were right. If the world were really no better than 
what Goethe imagined it to be there was nothing for 
it but suicide. If it had nothing to support itself 
upon but these poor sentimentalities, view-huntings, 
trivialities, this world was really not fit to live in. 
But in the end the conviction that his theory of the 
world was wrong came to Goethe himself, greatly to 
his own profit, greatly to the world's profit. 



" THE ROBBEPwS " 195 

However, this new phenomenon flamed up, and 
next produced "The Robbers," five years later than 
"Werther," a play by Schiller full of all sorts of wild 
things. The Robber is a student at college, kept by 
his brother from his inheritance, forever moralizing 
on the rule of life, and the conclusion he comes to 
is, that life is one huge Bedlam, with no rule at all, 
and that a brave man can do nothing with it but re- 
volt against it. So he becomes a robber, rages and 
storms continually to the end of the piece, and finally 
kills himself, or does as good. The same sort of 
man as Werther, but more remarkable for that rage 
against the world, and the determination to alter it. 
Goethe says that it quite shocked him, this play of 
Schiller's. 

There was a similar phase in the literature of our 
own country, if we would look at it ; I allude to the 
works of Byron. This poet is full of indignant rep- 
robation for the whole universe, of rage and scowl 
against it, as a place not worthy that a generous 
man should live in it. He seems to have been a 
compound of the Robber and Werther put together ; 
his poems have evoked more response than any other 
phase of Wertherism. This sentimentalism was the 
ultimatum of scepticism, therefore we are bound to 
welcome it however absurd it may be, for it cannot 
be true, that theory of the universe ; if it were, 
there would be no other conclusion to come to than 
that of Werther : to kill one's self namely — no other 



196 BYRON'S POEMS 

way for it than by one general simultaneous suicide ; 
for all mankind to put an end to it, to return to the 
bosom of their fathers with a sort of dumb protest 
against it. There was, therefore, a deep sincerity in 
this sentimentalism ; not a right kind of sincerity 
perhaps, but still a struggling toward it. We are 
forced to observe how like all this was to the scep- 
tical time of Rome. That spirit raging there, in 
Byron and Schiller, and in Goethe's " Werther," 
trying its utmost to produce a loud noise, thinking 
it impossible for anything to be quiet and stormy 
too ! So in Rome we have in her sceptical times 
the tragedies of Seneca, full of nothing but tumult- 
uous rage and storm, ending in suicide, too, but not 
unreasonably either. There was no way for men 
but it. 

But we must now pay attention to another thing 
which followed closely on Wertherism : another 
book of Goethe's, published the year after "The 
Robbers," "Goetz von Berlichingen," the subject of 
which was an old German baron of the time of Max- 
imilian, grandfather to Charles V., who revoked the 
law of duel. Goetz, for contravening his ordinance 
in this, lost his right hand. A machine was made 
and fitted to his arm, whence he was called "iron 
hand." He was a real character, and has left 
memoirs of himself. This curious feature joined it- 
self alongside of "Werther" and " The Robbers," 
this delineation of a wild, fierce time, not as being 



197 



the sketch of what a rude, barbarous man would 
appear in the eyes of a philosophical man of civil- 
ized times, but with a sort of natural regret at the 
hard existence of Goetz, and a genuine esteem for 
his manf ulness and courage ! By this new work 
Goethe began his life again ; he had struck again 
the chord of his own heart ; of all hearts. Walter 
Scott took it up here, too, and others. But the 
charm there is in Goethe's " Goetz " is unattainable 
by any other writer. In Scott it was very good, 
but by no means so good as in " Goetz." It was the 
beginning of a happier turn to the appreciation of 
something genuine, as we shall notice in our next 
lecture. This new work, however, had come in the 
reign of quacks and dupes, when a good man was a 
kind of alien, unable to do the good that lay in him. 
We must accept this with a kind of cheerfulness ; a 
system of thought, whether of belief or no belief, 
which results in suicide, must come to an end — that 
custom of judging what was right and proper in a 
man by the cut of his clothes, or by anything at all 
but the heart God had placed in him. 

We come now, therefore, to the last act of scep- 
ticism, which was to sweep it all away. It was to go 
on but little longer ; it was nearly out here too, but 
more so in France than elsewhere ; still, a clear 
light enables us to trace its path. We may say that 
scepticism then had consummated itself. These 
sceptical influences had principally developed them- 



198 LAST ACT OF SCEPTICISM 

selves on books. If they had done nothing worse, 
it would have been of very trifling moment. But it 
is the infallible result of scepticism that it produces 
not only bad unsound thought, but bad unsound 
action too. When the mind of man is sick, how 
shall anything about him be healthy ? His conduct, 
too, is therefore sick, which indeed he partly feels 
is false himself, for there is no reality in it. The 
things, accordingly, that went on then reduce them- 
selves to two ; first, respect for the opinion of other 
people ; secondly, sentimentalism. The first of 
these is in itself very right, but to do nothing at all 
without first consulting others as to whether it be 
moral or not, is exceedingly blamable. We say of 
such a man, " all is over with that man if he is not 
able to be moral without help." What is the use of 
always asking about morality ? He has a certain 
light given to himself to walk by, yet he must have 
a great deal of talk with others about it, as if the 
world could keep him right by watching over him. 
The world will never keep him right, will never 
prevent him, when unseen, from breaking into doors 
and stealing. 

The next thing, sentimentalism, plays a great part 
in the latter periods of scepticism. It had become 
necessary ; it endeavored to trace out pleasure at 
least in a thing where there was nothing better. 
The writers of this class were Rousseau, Diderot, 
and the rest of their school. Diderot was not at all 



SENTIMENTALISM 199 

an exemplary man, far from that : one has no busi- 
ness to call him virtuous at all ; yet in all his books 
there is an endless talk about the "pleasures of 
virtue," and "how miserable the vicious must be." 
Quite as with Seneca. Then the work they made 
about Dilettantism, the beauties of art ; an ever- 
lasting theme in that day. 

In one word, there was then an universal mani- 
festation of consciousness ; every one conscious of 
something beautiful in himself. And that we re- 
mark in Werther, among others, that fine eye, the 
love of graceful things, which he knows he has, and 
thinks very desirable that other men should know it 
too. It is really egotism ; just like a man taking 
out the most precious things he has in his house, 
and hanging them on the front wall of it, that others 
may see them ; he himself can derive no benefit 
from them at all the while they are there, but only 
when he gets them back in his own house again. 
The most fatal thing in men is that recognizing of 
their advantages, all founded in that cursed system 
of self-conceit ; I can call it by no other name ; it 
has never existed but for the ruin of a man. 

All this went on more and more ; it had gained 
everywhere a footing. The consequence was that 
men in public offices thought no more of their 
duties ; each gave his business the go-by when he 
found no emolument in it. It was long since any 
serious attempt had been made to renovate the 



200 THE DIAMOND NECKLACE 

state of affairs. The duty was not done, though the 
wages were taken. 

In that country, France, where scepticism was at 
its highest extent, Ave can well conceive the end of 
the last century, the crisis which then took place, 
the prurience of self-conceit, the talk of illumina- 
tion, the darkness of confusion ! The story of the 
Diamond Necklace, for example. Goethe, that re- 
markable character, a close observer of the French 
Kevolution, and who understood better than any 
man the meaning of it, regarded this strange inci- 
dent of the necklace as so much " half-burned flax 
in a powder magazine ! " It was but a spark 
among all this combustible matter. Such a depth 
of wickedness was there then in men. 

Another symptom that this scepticism was about 
to end was the new French kind of belief — belief 
in the new doctrine of Rousseau, though he did not 
begin it. That had been already done by Mably, 
Montesquieu, Robertson, and other writers on what 
they called the Constitution. But Rousseau, a kind 
of half-mad man, but of tender pity too, struggling 
for sincerity through his whole life, till his own 
vanity and egotism drove him quite blind and des- 
perate — Rousseau, I say, among those writers, was 
the first to come to the conclusion of the Contrat 
Social. But before that he wrote " Essays on the 
Savage State " — that it was better to live there than 
in that state of society around him. "We have a 



KOUSSEAU 201 

curious anecdote, given by himself in bis " Confes- 
sions," of the manner in which he first formed his 
political opinions. He had been wandering about 
somewhere in the south of France, and, being very 
tired and hungry, he called at a cottage and asked 
for food. They told him they had none. He per- 
sisted in asking for some, " were it only a crust of 
bread," and at last the cottager gave him some 
black mouldy bread aud water. He took this with 
thanks, spoke in a cheerful and conversible manner, 
and won upon the heart of his host. Whereupon 
the latter told him to stop, and he opened a press 
and took from it some extremely good food, which 
he set before him, telling him that he was obliged 
to keep very secret the possession of what comforts 
he had, "or he would soon have no food for his 
mouth nor clothes to his back " which the king's 
tax-gatherer would not seize or his lord's bailiff. 
From that time Rousseau says he became a demo- 
crat. He began at first, as I said, disquisitions on 
savage society ; then followed a kind of revocation of 
that, a summing up of his ideas in the Contrat Social, 
the fundamental idea of the French Revolution, by 
which a final stop was put to the course of this scep- 
ticism, and all things came to their ultimatum. 

The French Revolution was one of the frightful- 
est phenomena ever seen among men. Goethe, who 
lived in the middle of it, as it were, declared when 
it broke out, and for years after, he thought it "like 



202 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

to sweep himself away with it, and the landmarks of 
everything he best knew," into one wild black dark- 
ness and confusion. However, at last he got to know 
it better than any other one of his time. It was, 
after all, a new revelation of an old truth to this un- 
fortunate people. They beheld, indeed, the truth 
there clad in hell fire, but they got the truth. This 
was how it ended ; but it began in all the golden ra- 
diance of hope, the belief that if men would but meet 
and arrange in some way the Constitution, then a 
new heaven and new earth would come down to- 
gether in this world. For they supposed that we 
were all arranged right enough personally, we only 
needed the arrangement of the Constitution. Ac- 
cordingly, they arranged it in the most perfect sin- 
cerity of heart. It is impossible to doubt this sin- 
cerity. Take, for example, the Federation of 1790, 
undertaken in the real spirit of Fraternity, a scene of 
the most infantine simplicity, men falliug each on 
the other's neck with tears of brotherly affection ; all 
swore that they would keep that law. All classes 
were rejoiced at the intelligence of this. For the 
upper class of people it was the joyfullest of news : 
now at last they had got something to do. To them 
therefore, more even than to the lower classes, this 
news was joyful : certainly to starve to death is hard, 
but not so hard as to idle to death ! These peo- 
ple were, therefore, glad as nation ever was : so 
glad ! This was in 1790. 



FRANCE VERSUS EUROPE 203 

Two years and six weeks after that the September 
massacres began ! They had never been contem- 
plated when the Revolution commenced ; no man 
friendly to the Revolution had any idea of it. But 
these people had no principle in w T hat they did but 
the idea of their duty to give haj^piness to them- 
selves and one another ; that was their virtue. This 
is not a true notion of virtue. A man who would 
be virtuous must not expect to find happiness here. 
We cannot flatter him that virtue is to give him 
temporal happiness ; it is, too often, allied to phys- 
ical suffering. We can say, then, as to these phe- 
nomena of the French Revolution in general, that 
■where dishonest and foolish people are, there will 
always be dishonesty and folly. W"e cannot distil 
knavery into honesty ! 

The next fact that we have to notice is that in 
such a consummation Europe would infallibly rise 
against it, and try to put it down. And it actually 
did so. Nor could Europe avoid it. Europe had a 
right to do what it did, just as the French Revo- 
lution, which it tried to crush, had a right to be. 
For the poor people, ground down to the lowest 
stage of oppression and misery, had a right to rise 
and strive to be rid of it ; they had rather be shot 
than endure it any longer. And Europe, which saw 
that this could not end with France, but that the 
interests of all its nations were to be transacted in 
that arena, had a right to put it down if it could. 



204 BUONAPARTE 

And there was no way to adjust these two rights 
except to fight it out — that dismal conclusion ! 
Europe, therefore, assembled, and came round 
France, and tried to crush the Revolution, but 
could not crush it at all. It was the primeval feel- 
ing of nature they came to crush. Round it the old 
spirit of fanaticism had rallied, and it stood up and 
asserted itself, and made Europe know, even to the 
marrow of its bones, that it was there. Buonaparte 
set his foot on the necks of the nations of Europe. 

Buonaparte himself was a reality at first, though 
afterwards he turned out all wrong and false. But 
his appreciation of the French Revolution was a 
good one, that it was " the career open to talents,'* 
not simply as Sieyes supposed, a thing consisting of 
two Chambers, or of one Chamber. And this, in 
fact, is the aim of all good government in these 
days, to get every good able man into action ; all 
Europe endeavors to put the ablest man in a situa- 
tion to do good. Buonaparte at last set himself up, 
put out the Bourbons, set up the Buonapartes. 
But the thing could not be done. He made wars 
and went about plundering everybody, and the con- 
sequence was that as all the sovereigns had been 
provoked before, France provoked every man now. 
In Germany, at last, he stirred up that old Berser- 
ker rage against him, by which he burned himself 
up in a day, and France then got ordered back into 
its own boundaries. Thus the French Revolution 



END OF SCEPTICISM 205 

was only a great outburst of the truth, that this 
world was not a mere chimera, but a great reality. 
Scepticism was ended, and the way laid open to new 
things whenever they should offer. 

In my next lecture I think I shall show you that 
there is a new thing ; we shall see the streaks of 
something developing itself in Europe. 



LECTURE XII. 

June 11th 

FOURTH PERIOD 

Of Modern German Literature— Goethe and His 
Works. 

During the last two or three lectures we have 
brought the history of that particular phenomenon 
of European culture, which we are obliged to de- 
nominate scepticism, down to its last manifestation, 
the great but not at all universally understood 
phenomenon of the French Revolution, the burning 
up of scepticism, an enormous phenomenon ! It 
was, we saw, the inevitable consummation of such 
a thing as scepticism. The life of man cannot 
subsist on doubt or denial, it subsists only on belief, 
attaching itself to bring out of any particular theory 
what life it offers. The French Revolution began 
some centuries before it finally broke out ; a rude 
condition to go through all Europe, a fiery phe- 
nomenon to go through all the world, it was in- 
dispensable. Yet, frightful as it was in itself, and 
as productive of a bloody twenty-five years' war, we 



A NEW PERIOD 207 

ought to welcome it : it waa the price of what is 
indispensable to our existence, and at that time the 
world at whatever price must have got done with 
scepticism. The human mind cannot forever live 
in bitter sneering contrast with what lies about it, 
it must turn back at last to communion once more 
with Nature. It was, therefore, a cheering thing ; 
a priceless worth was in it : by it the European 
family got its feet once more out of the mists and 
clouds of logic, and got down again to a firm footing 
on the ground. It is now nearly twenty-five years 
since the first act of this drama finished, and 
Napoleon, who from being the great " armed soldier 
of democracy," became at last a poor egotist, and 
with his ambition and rapacities provoked the whole 
earth, got flung out in the end to St. Helena as an 
instrument which Providence had once made use of,, 
but had done with now. It becomes then interest- 
ing for us to inquire what we are to look for now. 
In what condition has this consummation left the 
minds of men? Are we to reckon on a new period 
of things, of better, infinitely extending hopes ? or is 
scepticism still to go on in the same phase through 
Europe? To these questions we shall direct our 
attention to-day. 

In the first place I must remark that if we admit 
the French Revolution to be such a thing as it 
really is, we shall see that such a continuance of old 
things had become altogether impossible, that all 



208 MAN AWAKENED 

things predicted of it had come to pass, that men 
had shaken off their formulas and awoke out of the 
nightmare that had gone on so long, crushing the 
life out of them, that state of paralysis ; and that 
man so awakened, like as in the fable of Antseus, 
gathered strength and life once more as he touched 
the earth and its realities. If we look over the 
history of Europe, both prior to the French Involu- 
tion and since, we see good in store for us ; the 
political world if not better regulated still regulated 
by a reality, and, independently of that, the spiritual 
side of things undergoing a great change also, by 
means of the modern school in German literature, a 
literature presenting a character far more cheering 
to us than any literature that has appeared for a 
long series of generations. 

In the second place we can notice here a strik- 
ing illustration of the ancient fable of the Phoenix. 
The ancients had a wise meaning in all these fables, 
far deeper than any of their philosophies have. All 
things are mortal in this world ; everything that 
exists in time exists with the law of change and 
mortality imprinted upon it. It is the story of the 
Phoenix which periodically, after a thousand years, 
becomes a funeral pyre of its own creation, and so 
out of its own ashes becomes a new Phoenix. It is 
the law of all things. Paganism, for example, in its 
time produced many great things, brave and noble 
men, till at last it came to fall and crumble away 



MEANING OF GERMAN LITERATURE 209 

into a mere disputatious philosophy. And so down 
to the Protestant system ; for the Middle Ages in 
this respect answered to the Heroic Ages of old 
Greece, and as Homer had lived, so Dante lived. 
Similarly the destruction of the Roman system of 
Paganism (for the Romans had their distinct system, 
very different from that of the Greeks), like the 
introduction of Protestantism, was followed by its 
own period of Wertherism, a kind of blind struggle 
against the evils that lay around it, and ending at 
last in what was infinitely more terrific than any 
French Revolution, that wild in-bursting of all the 
barbarians into the old world, long spell-bound by 
the Roman name, but now determined not to endure 
any longer the domination of so degraded and 
profligate a race ; when, I say, these barbarians 
gathered themselves and burst in on that world and 
consumed it ! The awf ullest period ever known. 
And just so in later times the French Revolution, 
that bursting in of the masses who could not starve, 
could not submit to it, but must rise up and get 
rid of the oppression that weighed them down ; 
this, I say, is little less remarkable while it lasts, 
until there is found force enough in society to sub- 
due it. 

These things, therefore, being finished, and lying 

behind us, we now naturally enough might inquire 

what new doctrine it is that is now proposed to us ; 

what is the meaning of German literature? But 

14 



210 GERMAN DOCTRINES 

this question is not susceptible of an immediate 
answer. It is one of the chief qualities of German 
literature, that it has no particular theory at all, in 
the front of it ; very little theory is to be had 
posted there — offered for sale to us. The men who 
constructed the German literature had quite other 
objects in view ; their object was not to teach the 
world, but to work out in some manner an enfran- 
chisement for their own souls, to save themselves 
from being crushed down by the world. And on 
the contrary, seeing here what I have been always 
convinced I saw, the blessed, thrice blessed, phe- 
nomenon of men unmutilated in all that constitutes 
man, able to believe, and be in all things men ; 
seeing this, I say, there is here the thing that has 
all other things presupposed in it. It needed but 
the first time to have been ever done, the second 
time they would have found it a great deal easier to 
do. 

As to their particular doctrines, there is nothing 
definite or precise to be said. How they thought 
or felt, how they proposed to bring in the heroic 
age again, how they did their task, can only be 
learned by dint of studying long what it is these 
men found it good to say. Doubtless there are few 
here who are as yet sufficiently acquainted with the 
language to make that study, but I hope it will not 
be many years before it will be difficult to get any 
audience gathered here to hear a lecture upon the 



RECIPES EOR HAPPINESS 211 

literature of Germany without having read its chief 
productions. To explain them best, I can only 
think of the revelation, for I call it no other, that 
these men made to me. It was to me like the 
rising of a light in the darkness which lay around 
and threatened to swallow me up. I was then in 
the very midst of Wertherism, the blackness and 
darkness of death. There was one thing in particu- 
lar which struck me in Goethe : it is in his " Wil- 
helm Meister." He had been describing an asso- 
ciation of all sorts of people of talent, formed to 
receive propositions and give responses to them, 
all which he described with a sort of seriousness at 
first, but with irony at the last. However, these 
people had long had their eye on Wilhelm Meister, 
with great cunning watching over him, at a distance 
at first, not interfering with him too soon. At last, 
the man who was intrusted with the management of 
the thing, took him in hand, and began to give him 
an account of how the association acted. Now this 
is the thing which, as I said, so much struck me. 
He tells Wilhelm Meister that a number of applica- 
tions for advice were daily made to the association, 
which were answered thus and thus, but that many 
people wrote in particular for recipes of happiness, 
all that, he adds, " was laid on the shelf, and not 
answered at all ! " Now this thing gave me great 
surprise when I read it. " What ! " I said, " is it 
not the recipe of happiness that I have been seeking 



212 THE WOESHIP OF SORROW 

all my life ; and isn't it precisely because I have 
failed in finding it that I am now miserable and 
discontented ? " Had I supposed, as some people 
do, that Goethe was fond of paradoxes, that this 
was consistent with the sincerity and modesty of 
the man's mind, I had certainly rejected it, without 
further trouble, but I could not think it. At length, 
after turning it over a great while in my own mind, 
I got to see that it was very true what he said, that 
it was the thing about which all the world was in 
error. No man has the right to ask for a recipe of 
happiness, he can do without happiness. There is 
something better than that. All kinds of men who 
have done great things, priests, prophets, sages, 
have had in them something higher than the love 
of happiness to guide them, spiritual clearness and 
perfection, a far better thing than happiness. Love 
of happiness is but a kind of hunger at the best ; a 
craving, because I have not enough of sweet provi- 
sion in this world. If I am asked what that higher 
thing is, I cannot at once make answer : I am afraid 
of causing mistake. There is no name I can give it 
that is not to be questioned. I could not speak 
about it : there is no name for it but Pity ; for that 
heart that does not feel it, there is no good volition 
in that heart. This higher thing was once named 
" The Cross of Christ," not a happy thing that sure- 
ly. The worship of sorrow named by the old heroic 
martyrs, named in all the heroic sufferings, all the 



METAPHYSICIANS 213 

heroic acts of man. I do not mean to say that the 
whole creed of German literature can be reduced to 
this one thing, it would be absurd to say so ; but 
that was the commencement of it. And just as 
William Penn said of the Pagan system, that Chris- 
tianity was not come to destroy what was true in it, 
but to purify it of errors, and then to embrace it 
within itself ; so I began to see with respect to this 
world of ours, that the Phoenix was not burnt wholly 
up when its ashes were scattered in the French Rev- 
olution, but that there was yet something immortal 
in all things that were genuine, which now survived, 
and for the future was to cherish all hopes. For it 
is the special nature of man to have comfort by him, 
to aid and support himself. If there is any one of 
you here now prosecuting the same kinds of studies 
as I then did, and has not arrived at it yet by a way 
of his own (for there are many ways to it), he will, 
when he first discovers this high truth, be anxious 
to know what it is, and get better and better ac- 
quainted with it. 

And that you also may be enabled to realize to 
yourselves what I have realized to myself, I shall 
proceed to point out one or two figures in German 
literature, one or two men who have been the chief 
speakers in it. 

Of the philosophers of Germany, the metaphy- 
sicians of Germany, I shall say nothing at present. 
I studied them once attentively ; but I found that I 



214 GOETHE 

got nothing out of them. One may just say of them 
that they are the precisely opposite to Hume ; Hume 
starting out of materialism and sensualism, certain 
of nothing except that he himself was, alive ; while 
the Germans, on the contrary, start from the prin- 
ciple " that there is an universal truth in things " — 
spiritualism ; that trying to go about seeking evi- 
dences for belief is like one who would search for 
the sun at noonday by the light of a farthing rush- 
light ! Blow out your rushlight, they say, and you 
will soon see the sun ! But this study of meta- 
physics, I say, had only the result, after bringing 
me rapidly through different phases of opinion, at 
last, to deliver me altogether out of metaphysics. I 
found it altogether a frothy system ; no right be- 
ginning to it, no right ending. I began with Hume 
and Diderot, and as long as I was with them I ran 
at Atheism, at blackness, at materialism of all kinds. 
If I read Kant, I arrived at precisely opposite con- 
clusions, that all the world was spirit namely, that 
there was nothing material at all anywhere ; and 
the result was what I have stated, that I resolved 
for my part to have nothing more to do with meta- 
physics at all ! 

The first writer I shall notice is Goethe. The ap- 
pearance of such a man at any given era is, in my 
opinion, the greatest thing that can happen in it — 
a man who has the soul to think, and be the moral 
guide of his own nation and of the whole world. 



GOETHE AND SHAKESPEARE 215 

All people that live under his influence gather 
themselves round him, and therefore, although 
many writers made their appearance in Germany 
after him, Goethe was the man to whom they looked 
for inspiration ; they took from him the color they 
assume. I can have little to say of him in these 
limits. I can say of him the same as I said of 
Shakespeare : there has been no such man as him- 
self since Shakespeare. He was not like Shake- 
speare, yet in some respects he came near to Shake- 
speare — in his clearness, tolerance, humane depth. 
He, too, was a devout man. You grant a devout 
man, you grant a wise man : no man has a seeing 
eye. without first having had a seeing heart. Other- 
wise the genius of man is but spasmodic and frothy. 
I should say, therefore, that the thing one often hears, 
" that such and such a man is a wise man, but a 
man of a base heart," is altogether an impossibility, 
thank Heaven ! Virtue is the palladium of our in- 
tellects. If wickedness were consistent with wis- 
dom, we should often have the Devil in this world 
of ours regulating all our affairs ; but the thing is 
impossible. 

Thus all the things in Shakespeare breathe of 
wisdom and morality, and all are one. So, if you 
grant me Goethe's worth, you grant me all things 
beside it. Indeed, we may find his greatness in 
this one fact. We saw his " Werther" and " Ber- 
lichingen" appear, those fountain-heads of that 



216 



European literature which has been going on ever 
since. Goethe himself soon got out of that alto- 
gether, and he resolved to be sincere once more, 
being convinced that it was all wrong, nonsense, 
mean, and paltry ; and that, if there was nothing 
better to be done with it, he ought to hold his 
tongue about it altogether. This was to feel like 
one who was to become one of the kings of this 
world. Accordingly, for twenty years after that, 
while all Germany was raging, as we saw, and the 
whole people had in a manner become one set of 
desperate, whiskered man-haters, Goethe held his 
peace. Fame to him was little in comparison with 
an enfranchised soul. His next work (for " Faust," 
properly speaking, belongs to the " Werther " pe- 
riod) was "Wilhelm Meister," published in the 
year 1795. This is a strange book, and though it 
does not fly away on the wind like " Werther," it is 
even stranger than " Werther." 

At this time the man has got himself organized at 
last — built up ; his mind adjusted to what he can- 
not cure, not suicidally grinding itself to pieces. 
But there was no pity yet in him. It is very curious 
to observe how at this time, ideal art, painting, 
poetry, were in his view the highest things, good- 
ness being only included in it. There is even no 
positive recognition of a God, but only of a stubborn 
force, really a kind of heathen thing. Still, there 
is some belief ; belief in himself, that most useful of 



goethe's philosophy 217 

all beliefs. He got that when his strength was at 
its highest. As his mind gets higher, more concen- 
trated in itself (for Goethe lived very silent, the 
most silent of men), in its own privacy it becomes 
more serious too, uttering tones of most beautiful 
devoutness, recognitions of all things that are true 
in the world. 

For example, in the continuation of his "Wil- 
helm Meister," written when he was near severity 
years old, there is a chapter that has been called 
the best chapter ever yet written on Christianity. 
I never met anywhere with a better. It is out of 
that I quoted that beautiful phrase applied to 
Christianity, "the Worship of Sorrow," also styled 
by him " the Divine Depth of Sorrow ! " Also in 
the last book of all he ever wrote, the most consid- 
erable book in a poetical view, the " West-Ostlicher 
Divan," we have the same display of pious feeling. 
Yet it is in form a Mahometan-Persian series of de- 
lineations, but its whole spirit is Christian ; it is 
that of Goethe himself, the old poet who goes up 
and down singing little snatches] of his own feelings 
on different things. It grows extremely beautiful 
as it goes on, full of the finest things possible, which 
sound like the jingling of bells when the " queen of 
the fairies rides abroad." The whole gathers itself 
up in the end into what Goethe thinks on matters 
at large. But we can see that what he spoke is not 
the thousandth part of what lay in him. It is, in 



218 DEFENCE OF GOETHE 

fact, the principal charm in him, that he has the 
wisdom to speak what is to be spoken, to be silent 
on what is not to be spoken. 

Alongside of Goethe we must rank Schiller. By 
the bye, I have said nothing about the objections 
sometimes made to Goethe. It is a mortifying thing 
to feel that want of recognition among men to 
which a great writer is subject. Not that Goethe 
has not had in general an ample recognition ; but 
still there are men, whose ideas are not nonentities 
at all, but who very much differ about Goethe and 
his character. One thing that has been said of him 
very strangely is that in all his writings he appears 
" too happy." A most amazing accusation against a 
man ! much more against Goethe, who tells us that 
in his youth he could often have run a dagger into 
his heart. He could at any time have been as mis- 
erable, if he liked, as these critics could wish ; but 
he very wisely kept his misery to himself, or rather 
misery was to him the problem he had to solve, the 
work he had to do. Thus, when somebody, on 
seeing his portrait, exclaimed, " Voila un homme 
qui a eu beaucoup de chagrin," he instantly replied, 
" No ! but of one rather who has turned his suffer- 
ings into useful work ! " Another objection made 
to him has been that he never took part in the polit- 
ical troubles of his time, never acted either as a 
Reformer or Conservative. But he did right not to 
meddle with these miserable disputes. To expect 



SCHILLER 219 

this of his genius would be like asking the moon to 
come out of the heavens, and become a mere street 
torch, and then to go out. 

Schiller has been more generally admired than 
Goethe, and no doubt he was a noble man ; but his 
qualification for literature was in every way nar- 
rower than Goethe's. The principal characteristic 
of Schiller is a chivalry of thought, described by 
Goethe as " the Spirit of Freedom," struggling ever 
forward to be free. It was this that produced " The 
Robbers." Goethe says that the " very shape of 
his body and the air with which he walked showed 
the determined lover of freedom, one who could not 
brook the notion of slavery," and that not only 
under men, but under anything else. But Schiller, 
notwithstanding this, in my opinion, could not have 
written one good poem if he had not met with 
Goethe. At the time of their meeting he had last 
written the play of " Don Carlos," a play full of 
high-sounding but startling things. The principal 
character, Mendoza, in particular talks very grandly 
and largely throughout. It is well described as 
being like a " lighthouse, high, far-seen, and withal 
empty." It is, in fact, very like what the people of 
that day, the Girondists of the French Revolution, 
were always talking about, the "Bonheur du Peu- 
ple," and the rest. To this point, then, Schiller had 
arrived, when, being tired of this kind of composi- 
tion, he left poetry, apparently forever, and wrote 



220 GOETHE AND SCHILLER 

several very sound historical books, and nothing 
else. 

Goethe, who was ten years older than Schiller, 
first met him at this period. He did not court an. 
acquaintance with him. In fact, he says himself 
that he " disliked Schiller," and kept out of his way 
as much as possible. Schiller also disliked Goethe 
for his cold impassivity, and tried to avoid him too. 
However, they happened to come together, and a 
mutual friendship ensued ; and it was very credit- 
able to Schiller — how he attached himself to Goethe, 
and sought his instructions, and how he got light 
out of Goethe. There was always something, how- 
ever, monastic in Schiller. He never attempted to 
bring the great page of life into poetry, but would 
retire into corners, and deal with it there. He was 
too aspiring, too restless ; it brought him to the bed 
of sickness ; he could not live in communion with 
earth. It is melancholy to read how in his latter 
days he used to spend whole nights in his garden 
house, drinking wine-chocolate (a beverage of which 
I can form no notion) to excess. Here he was often 
seen by his neighbors, declaiming and gesticulating 
and writing his tragedies. His health became com- 
pletely destroyed by it, and finally he died at the 
age of forty. 

There was a nobleness in Schiller, a brotherly 
feeling, a kindness of sympathy for what is true and 
just. There was a kind of silence, too, at the last. 



RICHTER 221 

He gave up his talk about the " Bonheur du Peuple," 
and tried to see if he could make them happier in- 
stead. Accordingly his poems became better and 
better after his acquaintance with Goethe. His 
" Wilhelm Tell " was the best thing he ever wrote. 
There runs a kind of melody through it ; the de- 
scription of the herdsman of the Alps is exquisite. 
It is a kind of Swiss thing itself ; at least, there are 
passages in it which are quite in that character. 
It properly finishes at the fourth act. The fifth 
was afterward added, as the rules of the drama 
obliged him to write it ; but this, though it may 
have been considered a fault, is not a fault for the 
reader. 

The third great writer in modern German litera- 
ture whom I intend to notice is Jean Paul Fried- 
rich Richter. Richter was a man of a large stature, 
too. He seems, indeed; to be greater than either ; 
but, in my opinion, he was far inferior to Goethe. 
He was a man of a hard life, miserable enough for 
the people even who complain of Goethe. I do not 
mean that he was unhappy in any particular circum- 
stances ; but what I do say is, that he had not 
gained a complete victory over the world as Goethe 
had done. Goethe was a strong man, as strong as 
the mountain rocks, but as soft as the green sward 
upon the rocks, and, like them, continually bright 
and sun-beshone. Richter, on the contrary, was 
what he has been called, a " half-made " man. He 



222 R1CHTER 

struggled with the world, but was never completely 
triumphant over it. 

But one loves Richter. He is most universally to 
be loved, indeed, provided one can get to read him. 
But that is a great proviso, for his style is as con- 
fused and unintelligible, as Goethe's is the best of 
styles — like the clear harmony of Xenophon, but 
far deeper than Xenophon. As he is the best of 
Germans for style, Richter is the worst. He cannot 
get half the things said that he has to say — a con- 
fused, strange, tumultuous style ! It is like some 
tangled American forest, where the axe has never 
been, and no path lies through it. For my part, I 
tried to understand him over and over again before 
I succeeded ; but I got finally to perceive his way 
of thinking, and I found a strange kind of order in 
him at last, and it was quite easy after that to make 
him out. His is a most gorgeous style ; not an 
articulate voice, but like the sound of cataracts fall- 
ing among the wild pine-forests ! It goes deep in 
the human heart. A man of a great intellect, great 
heart, great character — all exemplified in his way of 
life. 

His father, who was a clergyman, dying when he 
was young, left him in charge to his mother, a fool- 
ish woman, by whom his patrimony was completely 
wasted. In his twenty-fifth year he entered the 
University of Leipsic. He was at this time of a 
strange nature ; there was a sort of affectation in 



223 



him. Not only had he no words adequate to express 
his ideas, but those he had were not good enough. 
He» found the professors, in his eyes, very feeble in- 
dividuals. He met there, however, Ernesti, the 
distinguished scholar,* for whom he had a great 
regard. Yet his college life was one of great pri- 
vations. He says : "In gaols the prisoner's allow- 
ance is bread and water. I had the latter, but not 
the former." Plenty of water, but no bread ! Yet 
he was a cheerful, indomitable man amid it all. 
He held his peace and struggled on, determined to 
wait his time. That time came ! The people of 
the college had thought him mad, but he soon 
proved to them that he was not a madman, for he 
bestirred himself, and wrote boohs which became 
very successful. I recommend my friends here who 
know German to read his novels ; to struggle 
through his difficulties of style, and get acquainted 
with him. He has, among other qualities, that of 
great joyousness ; there is more joyous laughter in 
the heart of Eichter than in any other German 
writer. Goethe has it to a certain extent, and 
Schiller too ; but Richter goes into it with all his 
heart. It is a deep laughter, a wild laughter ; and, 
connected with it, there is the deepest seriousness. 
Thus his dreams ; they are as deep as those of 
Dante : dreams of annihilation, not surpassed, per- 
haps, except by the prophetic books of the Bible. 
There are yet many more writers besides those 



224 FUTURE PROSPECTS 

I have named, but I have not time for them. What 
can I do ? I can but invite my friends to get ac- 
quainted with them, and find out for themselves the 
nature of the belief that is in these men. They will 
find in them not a theory, not the demonstration of 
motion ; but they will see men walking, which is far 
better. 

I shall add but a few words on our prospects of 
what is next to come. I think, therefore, that we 
have much reason to hope about the future. Great 
things are in store for us. The world has but 
begun to enter upon this new course, and wise men 
will, I trust, continue to come and devote themselves 
to it. This hope assures me when I see people in a 
deep distress about it ; for I feel that it is possible 
for us to be free — to attain to the possession of a 
spiritual freedom, compared with which political en- 
franchisement is but a name ; not living on any 
longer in a blind sensualism and egotism, but suc- 
ceeding to get out and be free, out of this state of 
nightmare and paralysis. It is my hope that the 
words which Were spoken by Richter in the end of 
the eighteenth century are to come true in this. It is 
a most remarkable passage, and I must endeavor to 
give it you. He had been saying that on the out- 
gates of European history he thought he could read 
inscribed a similar inscription to that which the 
Russians had engraved on the iron gate at Derbent, 
"Here goes the road to Constantinople." That so, 



LEAVE-TAKING 225 

on the out-gates of events he could also read, " Here 
goes the road to virtue ! " " But as yet," he goes on 
to say, " as yet are struggles. It is now the twelfth 
hour of the night (it was, indeed, an awful period) ; 
birds of darkness are on the wing (evil and foul 
things were meditated on) ; the spectres uprear ; the 
dead walk ; the living dream. Thou, Eternal Provi- 
dence, wilt cause the day to dawn ! " 

I cannot close this lecture better than by repeat- 
ing these words of Richter : " Thou, Eternal Provi- 
dence, wilt cause the day to dawn ! " 

Nothing now remains for me but to take my 
leave of you — a sad thing at all times that word, but 
doubly so in this case. When I think of what you 
are and of what I am, I cannot help feeling that you 
have been very kind to me ! I won't trust myself to 
say how kind ! But you have been as kind to me as 
ever audience was to man, and the gratitude which 
I owe you comes to you from the bottom of my 
heart. 

May God be with you all ! 

15 



NOTES 



LECTUKE I. 

Page 3. — The Pelasgi. — Vague statements about the 
Pelasgi were currently and most uncritically accepted at 
the time of Carlyle's Lectures. Even in later years pro- 
fessed scholars seem unwilling to confess how little 
they know concerning them. Thus, a strange mixture of 
truth and error exists in the learned Essay of Canon 
Bawlinson — "On the Traditions respecting the Pelas- 
gians " — appended to his version of Herodotus (Vol. III. 
pp. 530-538, 4th ed. 1880). 

A useful note on the Pelasgi and some other obscure 
tribes mentioned by Greek writers will be found in Vol. 
I. of the last edition (1891) of Max Muller's Science of 
Language. After examining (p. 136 et seq.) the most 
accredited sources of information Professor Max Muller 
concludes — " It is lost labor to try to extract anything 
positive from these statements of the Greeks and Eo- 
mans on the race and the language of their barbarian 
neighbors." 

We cannot enter here upon the discussion of a subject 
so wide as the origin of the Hellenic and Italic peoples. 
The reader will find it most compendiously treated, 
with abundant references to other authorities, in Vol. 
III. of Dr. I wan Muller's useful Randbuch der Klassi'schen 
Alter thums-wisscnschaft. This volume, published in 



228 NOTES 

1889, is by six different authors. (It can be had sepa- 
rately.) No English work replaces it. For the Pelas- 
gi see especially p. 364 and context. 

Page 4. — Foolish to War for a Woman. — " Now as for 
the carrying off of women, it is the deed, they say, of a 
rogue ; but to make a stir about such as are carried off, 
argues a man a fool. Men of sense [e.g., Ulysses, in 
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida] care nothing for 
such women, since it is plain that without their own 
consent they would never be forced away. The Asiatics, 
when the Greeks ran off with their women, never troub- 
led themselves about the matter ; but the Greeks, for 
the sake of a single Lacedaemonian girl, collected a vast 
armament, invaded Asia, and destroyed the kingdom of 
Priam." Herodotus, I. 4 (Eawlinson's version). Io and 
Europe are noticed in the preceding paragraphs 1 and 2. 

Page 6. — Greek still spoken in parts of Italy. — The fol- 
lowing passage lately written at Lecce (Lupise) in south- 
ern Italy by a well-known French poet and romance- 
writer eloquently confirms Carlyle's words : 

" Un je ne sais quoi de delicat s'y mele qui trahit, 
par-dessous l'ltalie et l'Espagne, le vieux fond Hellene. 
Dans cette province peuplee de villages ou. l'on parle 
encore grec, il semble qu'un rien de l'ame antique ait 
laisse partout sa trace. Les airs que chantent les en- 
fants prennent dej^ ce trainement de melopee grave, 
tres distinct de la cantilene si vite commune de Naples. 
Les habitants ont une sobriete de gestes qui contraste 
avec le voisinage du Midi bruyant. II y a, dans le de- 
tail des choses de la rue, des gentilesses ou Ton se plait 
a retrouver la preuve d'une race affinee, — comme ce 
petit pont de bois monte sur des roues que Ton dresse 
d'un trottoir a l'autre par les jours de pluie pour que 



NOTES 229 

vous puissiez passer sans vous salir, — et, lorsque c'est 
comme maintenant, inarche public, la forme des larupes 
de terre avec leur bee allonge, celle des vases, j'allais 
dire des amphores, menagees pour l'huile et le vin, avec 
leurs deux oreilles, suffit a vous rappeler que ces pay- 
sans venus des plaines avoisinantes sont les heritiers 
modernes des colons cretois debarques avec Idomenee 
et les arriere-neveux des anciens sujets de Daunus, le 
beau-pere de Diomede." (Paul Bourget, Sensations 
d'ltalie, p. 229. Paris, 1891.) 

Page 7. — Date of the Trojan War. — For "a list of the 
principal views on this subject," see Eawlinson's note 
to Herodotus, II. 145. 

Page 9. — Lycidas. — Herodotus, IX. 5. 

Page 10. — Pelasgic Architecture. — Usually termed Cy- 
clopean. See Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. III. p. 537 ; 
4th ed. See also Scldiemann's Ausgrabungen, von Dr. 
Carl Schuchhardt, 2d ed. Leipzig, 1891. This useful 
book, epitomizing in one volume all Schliemann's works, 
is now translated into English. The wall of Tiryns, 
figured on p. 122, has many stones measuring 2-3 metres 
in length, and 1 metre (nearly forty inches) in height 
and depth. 

Page 12. — Euhemerism. — For a satisfactory explana- 
tion of this theory on the origin of mythology see Max 
MuTler's Science of Language, Vol. II. p. 449, ed. of 1891. 

Page 13. — Philippides. — His name in many manu- 
scripts is spelt— Pheidippides. Herodotus, VI. 105. 

Page 15.— The Getce.— Herodotus, IV. 94. The other 

people who made war upon the .south wind are the Psylli 



230 NOTES 

(Herodotus, IV. 173), noticed by Plutarch, Pliny, and 
various writers. They lived close to the Greater Syrtis, 
in the Libyan oases, and were renowned as snake 
charmers. 

LECTUEE II. 

Page 17. — Wolff. — Many do not know that the opinions 
on Homer which have made the name of Friedrich 
August "Wolf so celebrated were anticipated by Giam- 
battista Vico, the author of the Scienza Nuova, of whose 
life and writings a pleasing account, by Bishop Thirl- 
wall, will be found in the second volume of the Philo- 
logical Museum (Cambridge, 1833) . 

Page 17. — The Homeric Controversy. — What is called 
the Homeric question has two divisions. Both concern 
the Iliad. The first compares this poem with the 
Odyssey. The second discusses the relations of the 
whole Iliad to its parts. 

Many passages of the Odyssey, considered (as Hamlet 
says) too curiously, seem to show that it may have been 
composed at a later period than the Iliad. It describes 
scenes and beliefs, men, arts, and circumstances, in a 
manner often foreign to our readings of its predecessor. 
These views, respectable when urged by thoughtful 
critics, have gained a crowd of adherents to the opinion 
— that one Homer could not have written both poems, 
an opinion older than the Christian era. 

That the Iliad, as we now have it, is without unity of 
composition has certainly not yet been proved. Wolf's 
conglomerate theory, to which so many have yielded (it 
may be with reservations put forward as critical by those 
who envy Wolf his miserable reputation), appears allow- 
able only so long as we dwell on the mosaic structure of 



NOTES 231 

the poem with its varied episodes and its few trifling in- 
consistencies. Let us grant that before Wolfs time this 
mixed nature of the Iliad was not sufficiently recognized 
(for Homer's changes are so pleasing that one pauses not 
always to ask the reasons of these changes). Is the 
Iliad therefore a patchwork, because we cannot believe 
in a Homer who invented all that was once assigned him 
and who was supposed himself to supply his own ma- 
terials ? The rhapsodists living before and beside Ho- 
mer doubtless recited numerous hymns and ballads, the 
greatest of which told the fate of Troy and the anger of 
Achilles. They sang to audiences who appreciated the 
diverse versions of their lays due to the inventiveness of 
successive singers. Homer, his mind filled with these 
songs, re -shaped and put together such of them as best 
fitted his high purpose. In this work of 'giving form 
and combination to scattered themes lay the real strength 
of his genius. Could any poet do more ? The elements 
of existence are always the same ; the artist moulds and 
composes them into expressiveness. The infinite lies 
ever around us, within us. The commonest things are 
more suggestive than we suppose ; they are infinite in 
the extent and diversity of their relationships. 

The whole Homeric question thus gets involved in 
the wider one concerning the application of current 
phrases to designate the artist's productions. What is 
the significance of words like invention and originality, 
employed as synonyms for a certain excellence of literary 
compositions? The word invention itself, by a happy 
aniphibolisin, when used transitively cannot be deprived 
of its primitive meaning. Shakespeare knew this. He 
represents Worcester planning the rebellion against 
Henry IV., but he makes Falstaff say of him with grim 
irony, " Eebellion lay in his way, and he found it." 
Poor Worcester therefore was not original, though his 



232 notes 

invention cost him his head. No man of genius is 
original if we regard only his materials. A weaver is 
nobody. A smith makes neither coals nor iron ore. 
The miner who is nearer nature is an extractor, not a 
fabricator. Such spurious analysis would render Saxo, 
not Shakespeare, the author of Hamlet ; it would resolve 
portraits into pigments and canvas. But who accepts 
these results ? True invention is a thing too subtle to 
be analyzed. The critics who like parasites crawl over 
men of genius never can discover it. On the other hand 
there is a painful originality which all excellent authors 
avoid. They remember that what is called the common- 
place interests when presented from new points of view. 
The overpowering inventiveness of Edgar Poe is a de- 
fect ; his horrors displease us on a second perusal. 
Sophocles, more moving than any other tragedian except 
the author of " Lear," did not invent the awful myth of 
CEdipus. He took it as it was and transformed it for 
ever into a thing of power and beauty. The story of 
the Saltzburg emigrants was re-fashioned by Goethe 
into his "Hermann und Dorothea." Art and nature, 
here in perfect harmony, have united to produce the 
most finished, the most Greek-like of post-classical 
poems. The first, like the last, of poets was a shaper, a 
creator. Before all others he called into being persons 
and deeds never to be forgotten. The real Agamemnon^ 
must have been a poor creature compared to the "King 
of Men " portrayed by Homer. 

In reviewing Homer it is wrong to begin by contrast- 
ing the Iliad with the Odyssey — an easy task. This was 
Wolf's procedure, who did but industriously follow a 
clew already traced in the writings of Bentley. By pur- 
suing an opposite course, by first studying the Iliad as 
an independent work, we drop the prejudice which makes 
plausible these attempts to break the earlier epic into 



notes 233 

pieces. If then we again take up the Odyssey we find 
it not so difficult to conclude that its author also wrote 
the Iliad. To retain the more archaic constituents of 
the latter was surely not beyond Homer's skill. The 
remembrance of old customs and of quaint phrases had 
not yet expired in the minds of his hearers. The nice 
discrimination of the means at his disposal for the proper 
treatment of his two great subjects could not puzzle 
Homer, as it has done his commentators. 

Homer is for laymen more than for scholars. These 
have mauled him and made a muddle of his works, his 
fame, his personality ; those have revered him and above 
all read him. They have translated his writings, exca- 
vated his soil, and drawn renewed inspiration from his 
surroundings. Yoss and Lord Derby, Schliemann and 
Byron have interpreted Homer better even than Heyne, 
better than the learned and conscientious Grote. Schlie- 
mann's diggings have caused us to distrust Grote's ex- 
cessive scepticism, so gently rebuked by his friend 
Hallam (whose long letter is given in The Personal Life 
of George Grote, by Mrs. Grote, pp. 164-169). Byron's 
plea for the truth of Homer now triumphantly shows 
(see his "Bride of Abydos," Canto II., 2-4) that the 
poet's insight transcends that of the professors. All 
difficulties about the Homeric poems sink into nothing 
when we grasp the final question — could a plurality of 
Homers have existed ? That they did not exist is a be- 
lief some students have never ceased to cherish. And 
(to borrow ,Yorick's words) " the vulgar are of the same 
opinion to this hour." 

Page 19. — Robin Hood's Ballads. — A much better illus- 
tration is now afforded by the Kalevala of the Tavastians 
or inhabitants of Western Finland. " Their epic songs 
still live among the poorest, recorded by oral tradition 



234 NOTES 

alone, and preserving all the features of a* perfect metre 
and of a more ancient language. A national feeling lias 
arisen among the Fins, despite of Eussian supremacy : 
and the labors of Sjogern, Lonnrot, Castren, Kellgren, 
Krohne, and Donner, receiving hence a powerful im- 
pulse, have produced results truly surprising. From the 
mouths of the aged an epic poem has been collected 
equalling the Iliad in length and completeness — nay, if 
we can forget for a moment all that we in our youth 
learned to call beautiful, not less beautiful. A Fin is 
not a Greek, and Wainamo'inen was not a Homeric 
rhapsodos. But if the poet may take his colors from 
that nature by which he is surrounded, if he may depict 
the men with whom he lives, the Kalevala possesses 
merits not dissimilar from those of the Iliad, and will 
claim its place, as the fifth national epic of the world, 
side by side with the Ionian songs, with the [Indian] 
MahdbMrata, the [Persian] SMhndmeh, and the [Ger- 
man] Nibelunge. If we want to study the circumstances 
under which short ballads may grow up and become 
amalgamated after a time, into a real epic poem, nothing 
can be more instructive than the history of the collection 
of the Kalevala. We have here facts before us, not 
mere surmises, as in the case of the Homeric poems and 
the Nibelunge. We can still see how some poems were 
lost, others were modified ; how certain heroes and epi- 
sodes became popular, and attracted and absorbed what 
had been originally told of other heroes and other epi- 
sodes. Lonnrot could watch the effect of a good and of 
a bad memory among the people who repeated the songs 
to him, and he makes no secret of having himself used 
the same freedom in the final arrangement of these 
poems which the people used from whom he learnt 
them." (Max Miiller's Science of Language, Vol. I., p. 
437.) 



NOTES 235 

Page 20. — Character of Homer's Poems. — Homer in 
describing natural objects and events had the advant- 
age over other eminent poets of coming first. But this 
will not account for his inimitable freshness. Neither 
can we explain it by saying that he possessed those 
qualities which all consummate artists share in com- 
mon. To feel the full charm of Homer we must hear 
him as a Greek who sung to Greeks. That is why he 
is now addressing the world. 

The adaptation of Greek character to Greek circum- 
stances supplies a constant topic for admiration. Greece 
so suited the ancient Greeks during the earlier and bet- 
ter periods of their history that one might say truly — 
mind has never since been so happily combined with 
matter. English readers, a few students and visitors to 
the Mediterranean excepted, seem to miss the signifi- 
cance of Greece through some vice or defect of organi- 
zation. Yet one may still walk up to the Acropolis 
through the "shining clear air" of Euripides. Fogs 
and beer are but poor substitutes for wine and sunlight. 
The English, though wealthy and powerful, are discon- 
tented. The Greeks were active but not unresting as 
we are. Disposed to cheerfulness they gained repose 
by not craving what was beyond their reach. The 
Greeks loved returning to familiar things ; they sought 
no impossible pleasures, but enjoyed life as they found 
it amid their own beautiful world. Mountains to them 
were awful as the dwelling places of the gods, yet they 
saw these mountains arising from pleasant plains and 
rearing their crests under a smiling heaven. Ever the 
blue sky covered them, the earth was fertile, the forest- 
shade grateful, the sea rich and strange, the air fra- 
grant, luminous, and warm. The Greek mind was fitted 
by a wonderful capacity to take in all the good it could 
get. Like flowers on a fine day, this gay intellectual 



236 NOTES 

people opened to receive the light that shone on them. 
Their feelings did not wear out. Their senses did not 
tire. They did not, like the moderns, faint from ennui. 
Unlike the cold inhabitants of Northern Europe, the 
demon of dissatisfaction had not taken possession of 
their souls. Pessimist critics fail to perceive the inher- 
ent excellence of the Greeks. Their learning alone will 
not teach them to appreciate these children of the sun 
who, with child-like susceptibility, thought daily exist- 
ence a delight, who lived and who were happy. Pleased 
with so much gratitude the whole universe looked on ; 
kind Nature smiled and flung fresh gifts to the favored 
of earth and heaven. Thus Art arose, a bright exhala- 
tion of the dawn, a grateful incense upon Nature's al- 
tar. What the Greek saw he loved, what he wrought 
he refined, what he touched he made beautiful. His 
thoughts were, like his firmament, transparent, exqui- 
site ; his works sincere, fair, and finished. Why did he 
not stay with us? Why did he go away to a heaven al- 
ways rich and leave an earth made poor without him ? 
"The Beauty asked Zeus — why am I so transitory? 
Did I not, said the god, make only the transitory fair ? " 
These are the words of one who well understood the 
Greeks, though he was a modern and a German. But 
he was a man of genius and a poet — Goethe. Happily 
genius is beyond time and place. Let us pray that men 
of genius may ever arise to console mankind for the ab- 
sence of the vanished Greeks. 

Goethe has a striking passage in his Propylaen show- 
ing why a perfect work of Art appears also like a work 
of Nature. He says — "It is supra naturam, but not ex- 
tra naturam. A perfect work of Art is a creation of the 
human mind, and in this sense it is also a work of Nat- 
ure. But whereas the scattered parts are here gathered 
up into one, and even to the most insignificant are as- 



NOTES 237 

signed their due import and dignity, on that account 
does it rank above Nature. In conception and composi- 
tion, it is the creation of a mind which, by origin and 
cultivation, is at harmony with itself ; and such a mind 
finds that by nature it is in unison •with all that is in- 
trinsically excellent and perfect. 1 ' [Shakespeare comes 
close to these views in Act IV., Scene 3, of A Winter's 
Tale.] 

Moreover the modesty of the artist, who knows better 
than others that he cannot»comprehend the full sugges- 
tiveness of his subject, makes him appear less than he 
is. Carlyle has profoundly said — "In the commonest 
human face there lies more than Raphael will take away 
with him." The true artist therefore gives us his thoughts 
under the guise of simple descriptions. 

Such are Homer's descriptions. His words convey 
more than they first express. They never lose their 
meaning. They still speak to us when the battle of life 
is well nigh over. Eminent men of noisy reputation, 
once innocent scholars but led astray by worldly ambi- 
tion (whether on the paths of politics, law, trade, or ec- 
clesiastical strife matters little) may keep uncorrupted 
one corner of their heart which registers and responds 
to youthful sympathies with Homer. Such men cannot 
be altogether lost. There is a something in them, if not 
their own, which may yet soften the inexorable Parcae, 
nay even Minos himself. Plutarch tells how the Sicilians, 
before sheltering a ship chased by pirates, asked if any 
on board could repeat to them verses from Euripides. 

Page 21. — lWei8a)!>. — It was at the Isthmian games 
that Poseidon was especially honored. In less pious 
times a profane Greek versifier thus referred to him : 

" When Xeptune appeared at the Isthmian games, 
Ho spoke most politely to numerous dames. 



238 NOTES 

But, not finding one free from frivolity, 

He bowed and went back to his home in the sea. 

'The mermaids, 1 he murmured, 'are better for me.'" 

Pausanias (VIII., 10) tells how " the Mantineans said 
that Poseidon appeared helping them " in their victory 
over the Lacedsemonians (see Mr. Shilleto's translation). 

Page 23. — The Dark-colored Sea. — In his beautiful pas- 
sage on art (Iliad, XXIII., 313-318, and context) Homer 
makes Nestor say to Antiloclms — 

' ' By skill the steersman guides 
His flying ship across the dark-blue sea. " 

Dark-blue is here Lord Derby's translation of a word 
which, strictly rendered, is wine-looking. (The French 
call certain dark-colored wines vins bleus.) The Latin 
translators of Homer ventured to substitute black. 
Homer has another term for the open sea reflecting the 
light blue of the sky. The sea " far shaded by the rocky 
shore " (Byron's " Giaour," line 43) and dangerous to the 
pilot was what Nestor meant. The fine and almost weird 
effect produced by this dark water in contrast with "the 
blue crystal of the seas " beyond (ibid., line 17) and the 
intense brightness of the firmament much impressed 
Goethe when for the first time he saw it at Palermo (the 
scenic character of Sicily resembling that of Greece 
rather than Italy) . Byron must have been very familiar 
with it, and Lord Derby, with appreciative tact, proba- 
bly thought he could not do better than follow the lines 
in the " Bride of Abydos " (Canto I., 9)— 

" His head was leant upon his hand, 
His eye look'd o'er the dark blue water." 

Other English translators (see Walker's Clavis Homer- 
ica, p. 47) say the darkling main, which sounds affected 



NOTES 239 

and is erroneous, the appearance referred to being no 
characteristic of the ocean in general. Homer was not 
thinking of the main but of those parts of the Mediter- 
ranean which had often charmed him. I do not know 
whether Mr. Buskin has noted this passage. 

Some German critics interpret wine-looking differently. 
Thus Gobel thinks it means transparent as opposed to 
troubled sea-water. Autenrieth restricts it to the deep 
open sea, when it reflects light in calm warm weather 
(see the Lexicon Homericum edited by H. Ebeling). It 
seems to be forgotten that deep water may occur very 
close to shore. Homer applies this word eighteen times 
to the sea, twice to cattle. Drs. Butcher and Lang 
translate it in both cases wine-dark. 

Page 24. — Epithets of Ulysses. — The endurance, or 
rather pale rage, of Ulysses against the suitors is per- 
haps best shown in the opening of Book XX. of the 
Odyssey. Ulysses, after nightfall, has gone to rest on 
a bed of skins in the veranda of his own house. Seeing 
the suitors' mistresses go by his wrath is stirred, where, 
upon he displays the struggle within his mind by alter- 
nately expressing and calming his pent-up feelings. 
The reader is referred to the translation of the Odyssey 
by Drs. Butcher and Lang, the best English prose ver- 
sion known to us. These writers for much-enduring sub- 
stitute steadfast. 

As to the epithets of Ulysses Carlyle is certainly 
wrong. The word he translated by the phrase — " man 
of cunning and stratagem" (i.e., prudent, strategic) is 
applied to Ulysses only fourteen times in the Iliad, but 
sixty-six times in the Odyssey. It has three approxi- 
mate synonyms, similarly used, eight times in the for- 
mer, twenty-four in the latter poem. The term much- 
enduring, with its synonyms, does not occur in the 



240 NOTES 

Odyssey fifty times. Surely the two qualities Carlyle 
opposes are not incompatible. They are so far from 
being so that Homer himself ascribes both to his hero 
in the context of the passage to which we have above 
referred. If Victorian is to prevail over Elizabethan 
English the terms canny and gritty will take the places 
of prudent and steadfast. 

Page 25. — Ajax like an Ass. — Homer's comparison of 
Ajax to an ass may be naif, but it is also scientifically 
true and simply excellent. 

" As when a sluggish ass has got the better of the boys, 
Passing by a harvest field, and many a stick is broken 
Upon him, yet he gets within and crops the lofty corn, 
While they with cudgels smite him, yet their strength 

cannot avail, 
And hardly is he driven forth when satisfied with food." 

Iliad, XL, 558-562. 

The ass, like Ajax, is constitutionally courageous to a 
very high degree. Not being a predaceous animal, it 
shows its courage chiefly in defence, as Ajax does in 
the passage quoted. The strong nervous system of the 
ass is displayed not only by its pertinacity but by its 
soundness ; for, in spite of the bad treatment it receives, 
it is little subject to those disorders of wind and limb 
which beset the horse. Moreover, in southern and east- 
ern countries the domestic ass is often a splendid ani- 
mal, carefully improved by selection. In Homer's days 
such selection was not unknown. The wild ass is as 
graceful as the gazelle. In England the ass appears 
abject, since it suffers from the poverty or ignorance of 
its owner. See on this point what is said by Darwin in 
his Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. 
In Carlyle's younger days little attention was paid to 
those extra-zoological topics which concern rather the 



NOTES 241 

scholar than the naturalist, and which are now made 
familiar to us by the writings of De Gubernatis, Victor 
Helm, and others. Gibbon, it is true, urged historical 
students to read for pleasure and profit those classical 
chapters of Buffon which describe domestic animals. 
Buffon nobly pleads for the ass, neglected by the nar- 
row-minded merely because it is not a horse. 

Page 26.— The Greek type.— The late Mr. Hope, in 
his Anastasius (Chap. IV.), puts into the mouth of a 
modern Greek the following reflections on his country- 
men : — 

" Believe me, the very difference between the Greeks 
of time past and of the present day arises only from 
their thorough resemblance ; from that equal pliability 
of temper and of faculties in both, which has ever made 
them receive with equal readiness the impression of 
every mould and the impulse of every agent. When 
patriotism, public spirit, and pre-eminence in arts, sci- 
ence, literature, and warfare, were the road to distinc- 
tion, the Greeks shone the first of patriots, of heroes, 
of painters, of poets, and of philosophers. Now that 
craft and subtlety, adulation and intrigue, are the only 
paths to greatness, these same Greeks are — what you 
see them ! " 

See the context. Anastasius was at first attributed to 
Lord Byron, who in the earlier pages of his Giaour se- 
verely lashes the degenerate Greeks. For an eloquent 
tribute to the qualities of the ancient Greeks consult 
the Port-Royal of Sainte-Beuve (Livre3, xviii.). 

Page 28. — Pythagoras. — Bayle in his article on this 
philosopher cites almost all of the classical comments 
on the precept as to abstinence from beans. A further 
copious instalment of Pythagorean literature is given in 
Krug's Encyclopddischphilosophisches Lexicon. 
16 



242 notes 

Page 32. — JEschylus. — A spirited translation into Eng- 
lish verse of the opening chorus of the Agamemnon was 
published in the Classical Museum (Vol. VII., pp. 97- 
104) by Professor Blackie, who wrote several useful 
papers on iEschylus in earlier volumes of the same 
periodical. 

Page 33. — Sophocles. — Those who wish to enjoy and un- 
derstand Sophocles should use the editions and trans- 
lations of his plays now being revised by Professor Jebb. 
Cambridge has at length the honor of being foremost 
to interpret this, the foremost of the Greek drama- 
tists, as formerly she took possession of Euripides by 
means of his two illustrious editors, separated from each 
other by a century — Barnes and Porson. 

Page 34. — Socrates. — The reader of course is aware 
that we possess no writings of Socrates, and that what we 
know of him is chiefly derived from reports of his con- 
versation and habits by Xenophon and Plato. These 
rank among the most precious and pleasing of the 
Greek prose classics. A very readable account of Soc- 
rates was given by Bishop Hampden in his ' ' Fathers 
of Greek Philosophy " (reprinted from the Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica). The reader may consult this as a 
corrective (especially pp. 403 et seq.) of Carry le's remarks 
on Socrates as a wire-drawer. The prejudice of Carlyle 
against our philosopher was noticed by Emerson when 
he visited Carlyle in 1833 — " We talked of books. 
Plato he does not read, and he disparaged Socrates." 
Besides a paper by Schleiermacher " On the Worth of 
Socrates as a Philosopher " (translated by Bishop Thirl- 
wall in Vol. II. of the Philological Museum) the most 
important works on Socrates are Grote's Plato and La 
Philosophic de Socrate, par Alfred Fouillee, 2 vols., 
Paris, 1874. 



NOTES 243 

Page 36. — The Greek Decline. — For a compendious 
survey of the Greek authors neglected by Carlyle see 
Jebb's Primer of Greek Literature, a book equally profit- 
able to young and old students, particularly Part III., 
** The Literature of the Decadence." Also, Geschichte 
der Byzantinischen Lxtteratur, von Karl Krumbacher. 
8vo, Miinchen, 1891. 



LECTURE III. 

Page 41. — The Etruscans. — More copious and accurate 
information on this people, whose real origin is conjec- 
tural and whose language is still completely isolated, 
may be had from K. O. Mailer, Die Etrusker, 2 Aufl., 
von Deecke, Stuttgart, 1876, 1877. 

Page 41. — Cato, Varro and Columella. David Hume 
gives some interesting references to these writers in his 
Essay XL " Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations." 

Cicero {De Senectute XV) represents M. Porcius Cato 
vindicating at length the claims of agricultural pursuits 
as well fitted to occupy the energies of the Romans. 

Page 46. — Napoleon on Hannibal. — The following ci- 
tation is from the Memorial de Sainte-Helene, of Las 
Cases (Tome VII., p. 237) :— 

" Et cet Annibal, disait-il, le plus audacieux de tous, 
le plus etonnant peut-etre ; si hardi, si sur, si large en 
toutes choses ; qui, a 26 ans, conyoit ce qui est a peine 
concevable, execute ce qu'on devait tenir pour impos- 
sible ; qui, renoncant & toute communication avec sou 
pays, traverse des peuples ennemis ou inconnus qu'il 
faut attaquer et vaincre, escalade les Pyrenees et les 
Alpes, qu'on croyait insunnontables, et ne descend en 
Italie qu'en payant de la moitie* de son armec la seule 



244 NOTES 

acquisition de son champ de bataille, le seul droit de 
combattre ; qui occupe, parcourt et gouverne cette 
me me Italie durant 16 ans, met plusieurs fois a deux 
doigts de sa perte la terrible et redoutable Eome, et ne 
lache sa proie que quand on met a profit la lecon qu'il a 
donn6e d'aller le combattre chez lui. Oroira-t-on qu'il 
ne dut sa carriere et tant de grandes actions qu'aux ca- 
prices du hasard, aux faveurs de la fortune ? Certes, il 
devait etre doue d'une forte trempe d'ame, et avoir une 
bien haute idee de sa science ; en guerre, celui qui, in- 
terpelle par son jeune vainqueur, n'hesite pas k se 
placer, bien que vaincu, inimgdiatement apres Alexandre 
et Pyrrhus, qu'il estime les deux premiers du metier." 
Napoleon further comments on Hannibal in his " Notes 
sur l'Art de la Guerre." (See Gorrespondance de Na- 
poleon I er , Tome XXXI. Paris, 1869.) 

Page 48. — Words traced to the Pelasgi. — For "suffi- 
cient proof that Latin never could have passed through 
the Greek, or what used to be called the Pelasgic stage, 
but that both are independent modifications of the same 
original language," see Vol. I. of Max Muller's Science 
of Language. 

Page 54. — Ovid. — Carlyle would perhaps have been 
less severe on Ovid had he noted that the grave Milton 
preferred the "Metamorphoses" of this poet to any 
other of the Latin classics. Barrow also is loud in his 
praise. The elder Eousseau thus sums him up, — 

" Ovide, en vers doux et melodieux, 
Sut debrouiller l'histoire de ses dieux : 
Trop indulgent au feu de son genie, 
Mais varie, tendre, plein d'harmonie, 
Savant, utile, ingenieux, profond, 
Kiche, en un mot, s'il etait moins fecond." 



NOTES 245 

The moralizing Seneca abused him. Montaigne failed 
to appreciate him. Principes poetce Virgilius et Ovidius 
is the verdict of Joseph Scaliger. But he thought the 
Epistles of Ovid his most perfect work. 

Page 59. — Passage from Tacitus. — Of this passage, 
celebrated as the first noteworthy reference to the early 
Christians by a pagan author, Gibbon {Decline and Fall, 
Chap. XVI.) gives another translation. 

The same passage is further remarkable as showing 
how Tacitus sometimes loses power by not considering 
that the law of moderation holds good even in the exer- 
cise of that rare merit — brevity of expression. Further 
illustrations of this defect in that great writer are pleas- 
antly discussed by Father Bouhours in his delightful 
Maniere de Dien Penser dans les Ouvrages d'Espril, a 
book which, together with the Memoirs of Cardinal de 
Retz, was highly commended by the most graceful of 
English politicians, Lord Chesterfield. 

LECTURE IV. 

Page 62. — The Middle Ages. — The recognition of the 
Middle Ages shows that tripartite arrangements, in spite 
of superficial objections, are not always to be set aside 
in favor of more popular and usually more logical bi- 
nary divisions. The partition of history into ancient 
and modern is less intelligible and significant. Per- 
haps, when the world is older, this partition may come 
to be adopted ; but in that case what we call the Middle 
Ages will then be relegated to ancient history, and 
modern history will date from the first appearance of 
printed books, or from the nearly coincident epoch of 
the discoveries of Columbus. 

The breaking-up of the Roman empire was a slow pro- 



246 NOTES 

cess. Until it begins we are clearly within the limits of 
ancient history. But when did it begin ? Eoman de- 
cadence came not alone from invading barbarians, be- 
coming conscious of their growing power. It was also 
promoted from within. It had its origin while the em- 
pire yet appeared strong, but displayed its self-abase- 
ment by allowing its seat to be transferred from the 
banks of the Tiber to those of the Bosphorus. 

The Middle Ages end with the Byzantine Empire. 
But this empire had long before become insignificant, 
though not till long after were established those 
European kingdoms whose foundation seemed to follow 
the failure of the great Boman dominion. Are these 
modern kingdoms established ? Greece was reconsti- 
tuted during the first half of our century ; Italy in the 
second half. To the present boundaries of the German 
empire a date of less than a quarter of a century can be 
assigned. And now we hear of wars threatening again 
to unfix these limits. An ironical writer might say, not 
without truth, that the beginnings of modern history 
are still dubious, and that their adequate consideration 
must be left to some historian yet unborn. 

For the present, however, we may conveniently dis- 
tinguish the Middle Ages (330-1453) as exhibiting (a) a 
capital city, (b) a religion, (c) certain forms of govern- 
ment, (d) a learned language, and (e) a poem, which 
differs no less from the literary productions of antiquity 
than it does from those of modern times. 

(a.) Constantinople was the capital city of the Middle 
Ages, which began with its dedication by Constantine, 
and ended with its capture by the Turks. Here again 
comes in the irony of events. In ancient history Europe 
triumphs over Asia; the Trojans, the Persians, the 
Phoenicians, and others being in turn successfully re- 
pelled, while modern history is introduced by the es- 



notes 247 

tablisliment in Europe of an Asiatic power, which holds 
possession of the seat of mediaeval rule to this day. 

(b.) The religion of the Middle Ages in Europe 
was Catholicism, i.e., established Christianity. Con- 
stantine's endowment of his own Church could not hin- 
der the split which afterward severed the eastern from 
the western Christians. It is easy to exaggerate the 
importance of this schism, which served to show that 
Rome, deprived of temporal sway, could still subdue the 
minds of men. The blow dealt the Catholic Church by 
the secession of northern Europe from its allegiance 
marks indeed the commencement of modern history. 
Yet was this loss the effect of printing and political 
causes rather tban of sincere religious convictions, and 
the Papal power has since succeeded in checking the 
further advances of Protestantism. 

(c.) As to government, the Middle Ages display the 
downfall of despotism, the anarchy which ensued, and 
the subsequent rise of feudal authority. The peoples of 
Europe then possessed very little power. The Roman 
pontiffs became more dominant than kings or emperors. 
Subject to qualification the general proposition is true — 
that monarchy, oligarchy, and democracy, respectively, 
characterize the three great periods of history. In this 
matter likewise we seem (but seem only) returning to 
ancient ways. 

(d.) During the transitional linguistic conditions of 
the Middle Ages men of learning found a temporary aid 
in such Latin as they could use, good, bad, and indiffer- 
ent. The Glossarium of Du Cange remains the most 
indispensable guide to the Middle Ages in the hands of 
those who know how to read it. 

(e.) But in 1300 a bold, though not unconsidered, 
way of escape from this prevailing influence of the Latin 
language was indicated by no less a person than Dante. 



248 notes 

Not only does the Divine Comedy reveal the Middle 
Ages and Catholicism by a crowd of allusions, else lost 
to us, but its unapproachable excellence of diction 
makes welcome the light it sheds on what is eternal in 
man's nature, and those recurring events which to the 
serious never can lose their significance. 

Much labor will henceforth be spared the student of 
the Middle Ages who has at hand the valuable Tresor de 
Chronologie d'Histoire et de Geographie pour Vetude et 
Temploi des documents du Moyen Age, par M. le C te De 
Mas Latrie, Paris, 1889. 

Page 63. — Belief during the Middle Ages. — Jean Paul 
in his eulogium of Herder has these words (which we 
give from the translation of De Quincey): — 

" Two sayings of his survive, which may seem trifling 
to others ; me they never fail to impress profoundly : one 
was, that on some occasion, whilst listening to choral 
music that streamed from a neighboring church as from 
the bosom of some distant century, he wished, with a 
sorrowful allusion to the cold frosty spirit of these 
times, that he had been born in the Middle Ages." 

Page 71. — The Celebrated Letter of Pliny. — The reader 
may compare this letter with Trajan's reply in the Let- 
ters of the Younger Pliny, translated by J. T. Lewis, 
London, 1879 (p. 377). 

Page 73. — Pope Hildebrand. — For a careful and un- 
prejudiced history of this great reformer, with abundant 
references to other authorities, see Hildebrand and his 
Times by the Eev. W. E. W. Stephens, London, 1888 ; 
a small but useful book. In the Homily against Dis- 
obedience and wilful Rebellion some violent abuse of 
Hildebrand will be found. 



NOTES 249 

Page 7G. — The Crusades. — Considerate historians now 
believe that the two great lessons taught by the crusades 
were these. — First, the more thoughtful crusaders learnt 
that eastern infidels, Jews, Turks and heretics might be 
as good as themselves, and that sometimes it is right to 
regard our conduct toward our neighbors from points 
of view which priests are apt to neglect. Next, the citi- 
zens of western Europe, left to themselves, found they 
could do very well without feudalism. Thus the air 
was cleared, and people began to see how their freedom 
from licensed robbers, whether of land, power or privi- 
lege might, perhaps, one day be accomplished. 

Page 79. — The Troubadours. — Our best guides to the 
language and literature of the Troubadours are still the 
works of Fr. Raynouard, who was, however, wrong in re- 
garding Provencal as the mother, rather than the sister, 
of French and other modern Romance languages. His 
Choix des poesies originates des Troubadours is indispen- 
sable. Taylor's Lays of the Minnesingers and Trouba- 
dours may also be noted. Useful are the Essays on 
Petrarch by Ugo Foscolo. ■ According to Coleridge, 
"Petrarch was the final blossom and perfection of the 
Troubadours." The Italian text of Dante's Purgatorio 
is curiously interrupted (close of Canto XXVI.) by eight 
lines of Provencal, spoken by the once-famous poet Ar- 
naud. 

Page 80. — The Niebelungen Lied. — Carlyle's review of 
Simrock's edition of the Nibelunge, reprinted among 
his Miscellanies, should of course be consulted. It is 
full of information and contains some very striking 
specimens of his powers as a translator. 



250 NOTES 



LECTURE V. 

Page 84. — The Lombards. — The etymology of their 
name endorsed by Carlyle is now questioned. Longo- 
bardi may mean (not long beards, but) those living along 
the border of the Elbe, whence the Lombards are sup- 
posed to have come. See a note by Dr. William Smith 
to Vol. V., p. 165 of his edition of Gibbon. 

As to Magna Graecia (mentioned in the same page) 
most interesting details are given by Fr. Lenormant, La 
Grand Grece — Passages et Histoire (3 tomes, Paris, 1881- 
1884). But see further the remarks in Vol. III. (p. 
474) of Dr. Iwan Muller's Handbuch, to which work we 
have referred in our Notes to Lecture I. 

Page 86. — Illustrious Italians. — Desiring to occupy 
most of his lecture with Dante, Carlyle says nothing of 
the two great poets, Tasso and Ariosto. England has had 
the honor of publishing the best edition of both Orlan- 
dos (that of Ariosto and his predecessor Boiardo), by the 
learned Pauizzi. Neither does he mention the Italian 
historians. On these two topics much that is valuable 
is told us by Isaac D'Israeli in his Curiosities of Litera- 
ture, first and second series. 

Carlyle can scarcely be blamed for not anticipating 
the advent of another group of Italian worthies, includ- 
ing those heroic or more thoughtful men of action, such 
as Garibaldi and Cavour, who have so unselfishly 
achieved the noble work of liberating their country. 

Page 89. — JEschylus, Dante, Shakespeare. — Many will 
demur to this juxtaposition and say that the greatest 
poet of antiquity was Homer, of the Middle Ages Dante, 
and of modern times Goethe; Shakespeare being "not 



NOTES 251 

for an age, but for all time." Truly iEschylus is grand, 
but he is not the representative poet of Greece, like Ho- 
mer. 

Page 90. — Quotations from Dante. — To understand 
these quotations we must remember that the Inferno 
really consists of three unequal regions. The first of 
these, outside Dante's first circle, from which it is sepa- 
rated by the river Acheron, is for the frivolous, those 
mean Laodicean souls who are neither cold nor hot. 
The first circle, also called Limbo, is the place of the 
sinless unbaptized. It includes good pagans, many in- 
fants, and others. The remaining eight circles are for 
unrepentant sinners. The incontinent occupy the four 
circles (2-5) which in descending order succeed the first. 
Sins from corrupt will are punished in the four lower 
circles (6-9), or city of Dis. This main division of the 
wicked into two classes is taken from the Ethics of Aris- 
totle, as Dante himself (Cantos VI. and XI. ) fully ex- 
pounds. Dante is very precise, like a professional engi- 
neer, in describing these circles and their subdivisions. 

The occupants of the first circle are unpunished; they 
sigh, because eternally excluded from heaven. The 
frivolous are merely stung, outwardly by insects and 
from within by their own aimless propensities. But 
yet they are in Hell. Thus, not pain but hopelessness 
is the distinctive attribute common to every dweller in 
the Inferno, just as repentance marks the Purgatorio, 
and spiritual communion the Paradise 

This hopelessness is characteristically and not un- 
necessarily indicated three times in the third canto. 
First, by the dismal inscription above the gate of Hell, 
applicable to whomsoever it contains. Next (as quoted 
by Carlyle), when the case of the frivolous is told by 
Virgil. Lastly, Charon says to the sinners, before he 



252 NOTES 

ferries them across the dark river, " Hope not ever to 
see heaven." 

Dante puts forth his gravest powers in this inimita- 
bly picturesque canto, the only one wherein all the in- 
habitants of the Inferno are presented. Coleridge has 
noted its "wonderful profoundness." The severe side 
of the poet is most effectually displayed when he de- 
picts the state of the frivolous, of those whose char- 
acter is thoroughly unlike his own. Their place is 
never named. Not a word of articulate speech, but 
cries merely, do we get from them. Particular mention 
is made of one only, and this is done by way of peri- 
phrasis. Dante himself scarcely speaks of them. He 
dismisses them with extreme contempt as "the set of 
caitiffs hateful to God and to his enemies ; these scoun- 
drels who never were alive." With fine observation he 
notices their pauseless pursuit of a flag ; for such spuri- 
ous energy, by a strange contradiction, is often shown 
by swarmers (we may see it daily in our streets with 
restless pleasure-seekers ; we may read it on the features 
of giddy nursemaids, whirling along perambulators con- 
taining children for whom they care nothing). It is 
Virgil who explains to Dante their wretched condition 
— "This miserable mode those sad souls maintain who 
lived without infamy and without praise. Mingled are 
they with that caitiff choir of angels who were not 
rebellious nor were faithful unto God but were for 
themselves. Heaven chases them out, not to be less 
fair. Nor does deep Hell receive them, lest the wicked 
should have. from them any glory." Dante then asks — 
" Master, what grieves them so much, that they lament 
thus loudly?" Virgil answers — "I will tell it thee very 
briefly. These have no hope of death, and their blind 
life is so low that they are envious of every other lot. 
Fame of them the world does not allow to exist. Mercy 



NOTES 253 

and justice disdain them. Let us not speak of them, 
but look and pass." 

This last sentence (Carlyle's second quotation) is one 
of those few passages in which our English gives, with- 
out loss of style, the full meaning of the original ; the 
monosyllabic words reminding us of some of Shake- 
speare's most emphatic lines, best suited to solemn topics, 
like the — "Aye but to die and go we know not where " 
of Measure for Measure. 

When the pious and gentle Abbe de Saint-Cyran, 
shortly before his death, wrote, " que les foibles sont 
plus a craindre quelquefois que les mediants, " he drew 
a faint but exact parallel to one side of the powerful 
Dante {Port-Royal, par Sainte-Beuve, Livre 2, xiii.). 

Page 98. — Purgatorio. — Carlyle has elsewhere reiter- 
ated his preference for the Purgatorio. But he goes 
too far in attributing the greater attention commonly 
paid the Inferno " to our general Byronism of taste." 
The Inferno comes first and must be read first ; other- 
wise the Divine Comedy is not intelligible. Simply 
through laziness or want of leisure many fail to pursue 
their studies beyond "the first song, which is about the 
sunken." (Inferno, XX., 3.) 

Page 100. — Paradiso. — The Paradiso is more difficult 
than the two other songs, not in style but in subject- 
matter, which by its nature remains ethereal, intangi- 
ble, unearthly. For both Hell and Purgatory belong to 
our globe and Dante himself has said in a letter — "I 
found the original of my Hell in the world which we in- 
habit." (See Isaac D'Israeli's paper on " The Origin of 
Dante's Inferno.") Yet has the Paradiso never quite 
wanted some devoted English appreciators. Thus we 
read of young Hallam, the hero of hi Memoriam— (i Like 
all genuine worshippers of the great Florentine poet, he 



254 NOTES 

rated the Inferno below the two later portions of the 
Blvina Commedia ; there was nothing even to revolt his 
taste, but rather much to attract it, in the scholastic 
theology and mystic visions of the Paradise" 

The Paradiso is so beautiful throughout that quota- 
tions from it lose much by their removal from the con- 
text, a sure sign of perfect works of art (as with Mozart's 
operas, compared to those of other composers). We 
may refer, however, to one passage at the opening of 
Canto XXVII. When Dante hears all Paradise begin- 
ning to chant their hymn of glory to the Trinity, he 
says — " that the sweet song intoxicated me. What I 
saw seemed to me the smile of the universe." He had 
previously used the same concept of inebriation to indi- 
cate the very opposite extreme of feeling in the first 
lines of Canto XXIX. of the Inferno, which Coleridge 
cites as a chosen specimen of " the endless subtle beau- 
ties of Dante." We are here, curiously enough, re- 
minded of Byron — 

" Man, being reasonable, must get drunk ; 
The best of life is but intoxication." 

The reader should study the instructive " parallel be- 
tween Dante and Petrarch " to be found in the Essays of 
Ugo Foscolo. 

LECTUEE VI. 

Page 103. — Galileo. — It is insufficiently known that 
Galilei was not only great as a man of science ; he is 
also among the most charming of writers. His dia- 
logues sparkle with the liveliest humor. Asked why he 
wrote so well, he said he was fond of reading Ariosto. 

Galilei did more than Luther for the cause of real be- 
lief, by freeing men's minds from subjection to the tyr- 



NOTES 255 

anny of ecclesiastical opinions. Luther and his suc- 
cessors but endeavored to substitute one kind of priest- 
ly domination for another. Galilei taught serious en- 
quirers how they should begin if they sincerely wished 
to study nature for themselves. Let the way be cleared 
by getting rid of prevailing errors, that we may see in 
what direction the truth lies, and then methodically 
pursue it. The Copernican point of view was not a 
thing fixed before Galilei entered on his labors. He it 
was who effectually subverted previous confusing no- 
tions ; who showed the remoteness and littleness of man, 
no longer occupying the centre of all things, though 
capable of becoming great by the pious exercise of 
those powers which reveal to him his true relations to 
the universe. 

The clergy, from their point of view, beheld the wide 
firmament (that is to say, almost everything which ex- 
ists) as a ceiling stretched above man's unshining abode. 
To this restricted opinion they had adjusted their dog- 
mas ; and these, in the course of time, were threatened 
with the fate of the worn-out geocentric hypothesis. It 
is often now said that we are irreligious because we 
have abandoned our faith in miracles. Not so, but men 
ask what provision has been made to save the souls who 
are on the planet Jupiter ? The Church, therefore, was 
right in persecuting Galilei. 

" The moral law, in its application to man, is not the 
same, if (1) the earth revolves or if (2) she is motionless 
in space. Were she motionless, man evidently would 
have the right to believe himself the principal object of 
the Creator's thoughts ; but she revolves, and hence- 
forth man is no more than the privileged being of 
one of the millions of worlds circulating within infinite 
space. That is very different ; and this it is which has 
been perfectly comprehended by the very pious folk* of 



256 notes 

a certain epoch. Those who condemned Galileo, Coper- 
nicus, Giordano Bruno . . . were logical in their 
ignorance : 'tis this which excuses them. Piety did not 
suffice to teach us whether the earth revolves or not ; 
that, science alone could do." (Translated from Ana- 
lyse elementally de V Univers, par G. A. Hirn, Paris, 1868, 
p. 528.) 

Professor Mach, of Prag, has given us the best ac- 
count of Galilei as the founder of modern dynamics, the 
worthy precursor of Huyghens and Newton. His book 
(Die Mechanih, Leipzig, 1883) contains a copy of the 
fine old portrait of "the Tuscan artist" on whose 
friendly features our own Milton was permitted to gaze. 

Men of science are often absurdly contrasted with 
men of literature. I feel it good to remember that, 
thirty years ago, Mr. Huxley was the first person who 
kindly explained to me some passages in Dante, the 
last and the greatest of the geocentrists. 

Page 106. — Printing. — The date of 1450, assigned in 
the text to the full utilization of this invention, is rather 
too early. Yet 1440 has often been mentioned, as in the 
Essay prefixed to the edition of Pascal's Provincial Let- 
ters published by the elder Didot. 

Discussions as to the origin of printing have a more 
than antiquarian interest, although much of the evi- 
dence for their exact treatment seems wanting. We can 
hardly deny that Gutenberg was the real inventor of 
printing. Poverty and his necessary dependence on ex- 
traneous artistic aid threw him into the hands of Fust 
and Schoeffer, who from Gutenberg's workshop issued 
at Mayence in 1454 copies of the famous letters of in- 
dulgence, the first sheet printed from movable types 
which we are now able to verify. At the close of 1455 
or beginning of 1456 the same pair published the first 
printed book, the so-called Mazarin Bible, which Guten- 



NOTES 257 

berg years before had begun. A year later followed 
their Psalter of 1457, the first printed book bearing a 
date. Gutenberg, turned out of his laboratory, set up 
another, and in 1460 issued the Catholicon of Balbi. 
The merit of executing this work has also been snatched 
from Gutenberg by some of his pupils and others. The 
slowness and secrecy with which he had to labor not 
only injured poor Gutenberg in his life-time, but have 
since tended to hurt his reputation. 

That printing came late, that it was not devised at a 
stroke, that its inventor long toiled amid darkness and 
difficulties which have obscured his nobleness, his self- 
abnegation, his identity ; further, that its products were 
soon spread abroad, and that, unlike other arts, it 
reached rapidly a high state of relative perfection — need 
not now surprise us. These things are at once ex- 
plained if we bear in mind the many disciplines, antece- 
dent and collateral, which this invention demands, and 
consider the wonderful results it is fitted to effect with 
peoples ready to receive its influence. 

Page 107. — Gunpowder. — The results of the invention 
of gunpowder, dispassionately regarded as the typical 
species of the genus explosive, the editio princeps of a 
classical gospel preached to moderns (harmonizing and 
conflicting, in the most intricate manner, with the teach- 
ings of other uncontroverted gospels, which appeal like- 
wise to the passions of fear, greed, or vanity) may be 
viewed as they affect (a) professional fighters and (b) 
students of history. 

{a) Napoleon, a brilliant operator because he was a 
deep thinker in the art of war, is here our highest au- 
thority. He expresses clearly his opinion that certain 
qualities must have been common to the great generals 
of all times, and that they owed their advantages to the 
17 



258 NOTES 

exercise of these rather than to fortune. But he says 
further that, supposing the Elysian fields should send 
back to earth the choicest of the dead, less than a day's 
notice would enable Gustavus Adolphus or Turenne to 
fight efficiently a modern battle, while Alexander, Caesar, 
or Hannibal would need at least one or two months to 
study what can be done with gunpowder (" Notes sur 
l'histoire de la Guerre," in Correspondance, Tome XXXI., 
p. 501). 

(b) The historian, as well as the military man, will 
reflect that the effects of gunpowder are twofold — phy- 
sical and moral. It kills men at a distance, in great 
numbers at once, often with little skill, sometimes with- 
out danger to the aggressor, and usually by means 
which readily permit repeated application. It awes 
men because it may be used by unseen foes, because its 
action is swift and may find them unprepared, and be- 
cause skill can do little or nothing to thwart it. 

Hence the fear of death or wounds thus produced, the 
attendant uncertainty and such circumstances, immedi- 
ately influencing the senses, as noise or smoke, over- 
come enemies rendered careful of lives which in hand- 
to-hand encounters they would freely venture. 

Gunpowder is merciful, because by it (1) battles are 
soon decided and (2) victory cannot long be concealed. 
With cold steel it is imperative that a small disciplined 
army slaughter a considerable proportion of those op- 
posed to them. Kead, for example, the account in Gib- 
bon [Decline, Chap. XIX.) of the battle of Strasburg, 
fought a.d. 357 by the Emperor Julian against the fierce 
barbarian Chnodomar. It must often have been diffi- 
cult for ancient conquerors to know when they had won. 
We should therefore dismiss many charges of cruelty 
brought against Caesar and other illustrious captains of 
antiquity. 



NOTES 259 

Improvements of explosive weapons enhance their 
merciful tendencies. On the Franco-Prussian warfields 
in 1870, with needle-guns and chassepots, fewer propor- 
tionally were shot than with the flint-muskets fired at 
the battle of Albuera in 1811. In this terrible engage- 
ment seventy per cent, of the -victors were placed hors 
de combat (Napier's Peninsular War, Book XII., Chap. 
VL). 

It is true that non-explosive like explosive weapons 
act both on men's minds and bodies. But the former 
exert less influence morally, notwithstanding that, with 
strict irony, they are more sure in their physical opera- 
tion. 

The spear and the sword suggest feudal times and 
privileged persons. Gunpowder is a leveller, the fit 
precursor of our democracy. The weakest can use it, 
the strongest suffer from it. Its action, like that of 
fate, appears accidental ; premeditated as to its causes, 
its incidence is mechanical. Thus it is doubly dreaded. 
It is less horrible to be killed by a man than by a 
machine. 

" It has a strange quick jar upon the ear, 

That cocking of a pistol, when you know 
A moment more will bring the sight to bear 
Upon your person, twelve yards off, or so." 

Hotspur's popinjay was rightly frightened at " vile 
guns." As the improvement of lethal weapons pro- 
gresses, so does the unwillingness of men to be hit by 
them increase in a more than corresponding ratio (see 
11 The Warfare of the Future," by A. Forbes, Nineteenth 
Century, May, 1891). Perhaps in times to come every 
bullet will not have its billet. 

Page 109. — Hie Spanish Nation. — Prescott's Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella is more instructive and appreciative 



260 NOTES 

than any other book we can cite on the leading facts in 
the history of Spain and the distinguished qualities of its 
once eminent people. Nor is Prescott despondent as to 
the future which may yet be in store for the Spaniards. 

Page 112. — Mahomet. — Carlyle refers to Mohammed 
from the same point of view in his Lectures on Heroes. 
Space fails us for the discussion of this tempting and 
very interesting topic. The reader is referred to Gib- 
bon's treatment of it (see Chap. L. of his Decline, with 
the copious notes of Dr. W. Smith's edition) and to the 
learned Wellhausen's article on Mohammed (in the ninth 
edition of the Ency. Britannica). 

That Mohammed was either a true prophet or an im- 
postor (a deceiver of himself and others from first to last) 
states two contradictory opinions which in words are 
very easily expressed, but neither of which considerate 
students can accept as satisfactory. The first of these 
opinions receives some support from facts ; the second 
must be rejected, in spite of much plausible criticism. 
Neither Jews, professing Christians, nor infidels are likely 
to be fair judges of Mohammed as he really was, unless 
their minds are capable, in an extraordinary degree, of 
standing aside from the prejudices of education. The 
intermediate hypotheses — that Mohammed began in sin- 
cerity and ended in deception, or that his whole life 
shows a mixture of faith and scepticism, are somewhat 
more tenable. But they are also more ambiguous and 
less conclusive. Bather did Mohammed waver, not be- 
tween belief and doubt, but between belief as modified 
by contemplation or by practice. Like all distinguished 
men he displays a union, intricate enough, of weakness 
and strength. Powerfully as he moulded many circum- 
stances by his will, their force sometimes compelled him 
to say things in apparent opposition to what he thought 



NOTES 2G1 

and did. Moses, too, was impeded in his good inten- 
tions by external necessities, affecting men's minds, op- 
portunities and acquired habits. We do not sufficiently 
allow for the extreme sensitiveness inherent in several 
great men of action, such as Caesar, Moliammed, and 
Napoleon. They may disguise this by their power 
of rapid reflection, enabling them to utilize what seem 
to others defects, to derive fresh energy from the 
high tension of their repressed sufferings. Archbishop 
Whately [Lessons on Mind, p. 174) indicates "a sort of 
intermediate state of mind between belief and disbe- 
lief." He illustrates his subject by reference to Cowper's 
poem — "The Castaway." This weak though amiable 
and gifted man offers the strongest possible contrast to 
Mohammed ; but such remote analogies are, in one essen- 
tial particular, often the truest of all. It can scarcely be 
said with truth that conviction implies the initial absence 
of doubt, the power to question the crude assumptions 
others would impose on us. The exemplary hero of In 
Memoriam gathered strength and gained a stronger faith 
by fighting his doubts, not by ignoring them ; but dog- 
matic theologians do not commend Hallam's method. 
The progress of Mohammedanism after the death of its 
founder ; its persistence and extension to this day, not- 
withstanding hostile missionaries, politicians and ar- 
mies ; its suitability to many and diverse peoples — these 
things declare, better than historical comments, how vast 
was the plan this man set himself to devise, how excep- 
tional were the endowments by which he achieved it. 

It is well known that Goethe's mind was long occu- 
pied by reflections on Mohammed, whom he once in- 
tended to make the hero of a drama (see his Life by 
Lewes, Book III., Chap. 4). He has left us as a frag- 
ment MaliomeCs Ges<tno. He himself translated the Ma- 
homet of Voltaire, played at the Weimar theatre in 1800. 



262 notes 

Heinrich Heine's account (Englische Fragmente, XII.) 
of his visit to the London docks shows how genial is 
the response an appeal to the prophet's name can evoke 
from believers. 

Page 118. — Humor of Cervantes. — In this quality (good 
judges now admit) Cervantes is surpassed by no writer. 
The scene of Don Quixote's visor immortalizes a recur- 
rent weakness of all reformers. 

Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver's Travels 
are unquestionably the masterpieces of fiction. Perhaps 
the Vicar of Wakefield and Tom Jones should be added 
to the list. England, relatively weak in the fields of 
history and the drama (Shakespeare, a mighty excep- 
tion, deducted), shines well in this comparison, which 
attests the glowing imagination and rich descriptive 
gifts of its best literary representatives. Still Don Quix- 
ote remains the freshest of novels, if by a name since 
applied to so many worthless productions, it may be 
now thus designated. 

Page 119. — Lope and Calderon. — A little volume — The 
Spanish Drama, 1846, by the late G. H. Lewes, is almost 
wholly devoted to a very readable account of these skil- 
ful and prolific play-writers. 

Page 120. — Spanish Literature. — For a good guide to 
the authors Carlyle does not notice see the English 
translation of B outer wek's History of Spanish and Por- 
tuguese Literature, in two vols. 1823. 

LECTURE VII. 

Page 124. — Pyiheas. — The scanty fragments left us 
from the lost writings of this traveller (whom Strabo, 
when he cites him, loves to contradict) are little known. 



NOTES 263 

But see the " Eclaircissemens sur la vie et les voyages 
de Pytheas de Marseille," par M. De Bougainville, in 
Tome XIX. of the Memoir es de V Academie royale des In- 
scriptions et Belles-Lettres. 

Page 128. — William Tell. — A chapter under this title, 
showing how the story about shooting the apple arose, 
may be read in Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, by S. 
Baring-Gould. 

Page 129. — Comines. — Scott drew largely upon this 
writer in the preparation of two of his romances, Queti- 
tin Durward and Anne of Geierstein. The historian ap- 
pears as an acting personage in the first of these works. 

Page 133. — Luther found a Bible. — His doing so, an 
event nowise extraordinary, has in our time been made 
a subject for much misrepresentation by Protestants of 
the untruthful aggressive sort. In The Dark Ages, by 
the Bev. S. B. Maitland (a valuable book, lately re- 
printed), will be found a clear account of the matter. 

Page 137. — Ulphilas. — The significance of the work 
done by this estimable and much-abused bishop is well 
explained in Max Muller's Science of Language. 

Page 138. — Luther's words half battles. — Jean Paul was 
anticipated as to his motive for this comparison. Quin- 
tilian says of Csesar, that he seemed to speak as he had 
fought. 

Page 138. — Erasmus. — Bayle's articles on Erasmus, 
Hutten and Luther abound in fair and instructive com- 
ments on many things touching these reformers. What 
Bayle says or suggests, in his very pleasant manner, has 
been often in substance pilfered an<i clumsily refitted to 
suit the views of those who care more for their own nar- 
row views than for truth and honesty. 



264 NOTES 

Page 141. — Epistolce Obscurorum Virorum. — A full 
paper on these letters, with much concerning von Hut- 
ten, will be found in Sir W. Hamilton's Discussions. 



LECTUEE Vin. 

Page 148. — Mascou. — Geschichte der Deutschen bis 
zum Abgang der Meroving. Konige, Leipzig, 1726-37. 
In 2 vols. 4to. "The first German historian [says 
Ebert] who undertook to write the history of the nation 
(not merely of the empire)" Translated into English, 
1737-38. 

Page 148. — Saxons. — Consult about this people 
Klemm's Germanische AUerthumskunde, Dresden, 1836, 
and the word Saxa in the Glossarium of Du Cange. 

As to Saxon being to this day the Celtic name for 
the English — read in the Life and Letters of Rowland 
Williams, D.D. (Vol. I., p. 179) how this excellent cler- 
gyman introduced his wife to his parishioners, " and 
when, as in duty bound, they made some coropliinentary 
speech (of course in Welsh) his reply in the same lan- 
guage was, ' Ah, she is only a poor creature ; she can 
only speak Saesneg ! ' " 

Page 152. — Normans and English. — The spoken Eng- 
lish language shows in its grammar convincing traces of 
its Teutonic origin, although, in consequence of the 
Norman conquest and other influences, the number of 
Norman (or rather Grseco-Latin) words our dictionaries 
contain is double that from all other sources. We call 
English a mixed language with much confusion of 
thought, best dispelled by studying that serviceable 
book — Max Miiller's Science of Language. 



NOTES 265 

Page 153. — Elizabeth. — If England, as Carlyle states, 
was first consolidated under Queen Elizabeth's grand- 
father, so had France gained the blessings of peace, 
post-offices, strength and union, when guided by a far 
greater ruler, Louis XL, who died two years before 
Henry VII. came to the throne. In that same ominous 
year (1483) of the French king's death were born, by a 
strange conjuncture, the pious artist Raphael and Lu- 
ther, the potent disturber of nations. Europe was not 
long permitted to enjoy quiet. Yet England, as well as 
France, began at once to progress as soon as the former, 
after the wars of the Roses, ceased interfering with the 
affairs of the latter. When the English, under the 
younger Pitt, resumed their meddling policy, in sup- 
port of the wretched Bourbons whom they could not 
keep on their thrones, much misery for both peoples 
was again brought about. And we are still galled by the 
weight of debt and taxes then imposed on us. 

Page 154. — ShaJcesj^eare. — The essential resemblance 
of Shakespeare to Homer, in spite of obvious distinc- 
tions, is not the vain thing spurious criticism would 
make it. Both combine ease and strength, subtlety and 
naivete of expression, in a mode only possible to artists 
of the highest genius. 

That Shakespeare indulged in conceits of language, 
after the manner of the Spanish and Italian dramatists, 
is undeniable. But so did the severe Dante. Playful- 
ness in the handling of words pleases expectant hear- 
ers, reveals while it conceals the greater skill of the 
master, relieves his tension of mind, not unbecomingly 
places him on a level with his audience, and above all is 
necessary to the contrasted effect of those serious pas- 
sages he must introduce. 



266 NOTES 

Page 156.— Poet and Thinker.— No considerate person 
opposes the poet to the thinker, for thought involves 
sentiment and will as well as purely intellectual pro- 
cesses. (See Wundt, System der Philosophie, Leipzig, 
1889, p. 41.) 

Coleridge (Notes and Lectures vpon Shakespeare, p. 6) 
says — ' ' Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but 
to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to 
metre." But is it not more correct to distinguish 
science, strictly so called, from art in general ? And is 
there not a still more real distinction between conscious 
logical operations of the mind and those imaginative 
gifts by which both the poet and the man of science may 
profit ? 

Page 159. — The greatest men quiet. — The finest proof 
of this truth is afforded by one of the greatest of all 
writers, Caesar, to those who are capable of reading him 
between the lines. The brief gentle references of this 
powerful man of action to the blunders of his subordi- 
nates, the quiet way in which he passes over his own ex- 
ploits, his manner of speaking (or rather, not speaking) 
of himself are at once delightful and awful. No so- 
called religious leader has ever gained victories over 
others and himself like those of this immortal pagan 
conqueror. I could name two men of genuine ability, 
both of humble origin, unprejudiced and unspoilt by 
books, who felt almost inclined to worship Caesar's bust 
in the British Museum. The age of heroism is not 
dead, so long as this is possible. Bead what the late 
Richard Jefferies says of Caesar's lineaments in The Story 
of my Heart. 

Page 160. — John Knox. — The character of Knox will 
scarcely be upheld by Carlyle's eulogies. We may will- 
ingly recognize his unusual courage ; such men are rare, 



NOTES 267 

and he who is not a coward fairly claims our praise. 
But Catiline also was a very courageous man. Hume's 
History tells us how Knox successively persecuted two 
queens, Mary of England and Mary Queen of Scots. 
As an indication of his unrivalled coarseness of language 
read " The first blast of the trumpet against the mon- 
strous regiment of women." To learn his powers of 
tergiversation (for Knox, with his scholastic training, 
could play the logician's part, denounced in others by 
Carlyle as antagonistic to sincere belief) consider how 
he afterward behaved when Queen Elizabeth came to 
the throne. Maury (Essai sur les Legendes Pieuses du 
Moyen-age) indeed says that Knox " etait un hallueine." 
See his article in Bayle and what is told of him by the 
Be v. S. B. Maitland, in his Essays on the Rpformation. 

Page 165. — Milton. — Milton loved what was good in 
the Puritans, but he who sung of dim religious light 
and of St. Peter shaking his mitred locks could not be 
a Puritan at heart. Or rather, the pious author of 
Adam's evening prayer (Paradise Lost, IV., 720-735), 
than which David, Isaiah and other prophets of old 
have not left us more inspired utterances, was the 
only true Puritan of his time, compared to whom nomi- 
nal Puritans are but as stubble. Milton, like Schiller, 
was a real lover of liberty, without being an anarchist. 
In this respect he was superior to Carlyle, who shows 
himself an oligarch whenever he deliberately states his 
political opinions and is full of that morgue aristo- 
cratique which Napoleon declared to be, next to money- 
making, the highest creed of Englishmen, of middle- 
class Englishmen most of all. The American descend- 
ants of the Puritans still, in secret, cultivate this weed. 
The French, the Swiss and the Dutch are comparative- 
ly free from it. So long as Germany cherishes it, its 



268 NOTES 

unity will be spurious ; with all its strength and disci- 
pline, it will have this disadvantage, should it fight its 
internally unfettered antagonist. Strange irony of fate — 
that the least and the most despotic of the great Euro- 
pean powers, the first liberators and the last persecutors 
of the Jews, should now be united against that nation 
in which feudalism maintains an influence out of con- 
cert with the enlightenment and strong character of its 
hitherto un conquered inhabitants. 

LECTUEE IX. 

Mr. Anstey was hindered by an attack of malaria from 
attending Carlyle's ninth lecture. The reader, while re- 
gretting the absence of his reporter, will console him- 
self with the reflection that this lecture has been lost 
rather than any of the others. What the lecturer had 
to say on French literature may well be conjectured from 
the long papers on Diderot and Voltaire, reprinted in 
his Miscellanies. 

Strongly sympathizing, as did Carlyle, with certain 
aspects of the French ^Revolution, and powerfully as he 
has represented several of its scenes, he never could 
rightly appreciate French views of things. "We regret 
here to find him in good company ; for Coleridge, De 
Quincey, and many worthy English authors exhibit a 
like deficiency. 

LECTUEE X. 

Page 169. — Quotation from Goethe. — But Goethe also 
said, "My inheritance, how wide, how fair! Time is 
my estate ; to Time I'm heir." 

Page 171. — Reign of Quackery. — Carlyle might have 
added that nowhere is the doctrine that money will buy 






NOTES 269 

money's worth move practised than in the land of the 
almighty dollar, the free country of the free children of 
his favorite Puritans, who sought (as a female poet, 
with impious humor, has sung) "freedom to worship 
God," that is, to split into as many denominations as 
they pleased. See, inter alia, Dickens' American Notes. 
This multiplicity of sects, Archdeacon Farrar teHs us, 
is to be taken as a sure sign of sincerity. A more suc- 
cessful preacher of the modern gospel of Mammon, Mr. 
Jay Gould, improves its text by inserting a trifling mar- 
ginal gloss ; for money now buys what is not money's 
worth. He means " L'argent des autres," to quote Ga- 
boriau. For has not Mr. Gould honestly declared that 
without outsiders (the great host of worshippers who, 
with innocent and touching credulity, like all true be- 
lievers, kiss the rod and rejoice when they are robbed) 
speculators on the Stock Exchange, the high priests of 
the temple in Wall Street, would certainly starve ? The 
demon of credit (called by Addison a goddess !) sitting 
on his stool in the infernal counting-house, must view 
with an evil eye these ready-money transactions. 

Carlyle's second doctrine (taken from Byron), that 
Pleasure is pleasant, holds true, but chiefly for begin- 
ners and fresh converts. It is milk for babes. Happily, 
pleasure soon palls upon those who get more than their 
share of it, and thus the distribution less of pleasure than 
of pain is more equable in our life than the ignorant sup- 
pose. Philippe de Comines, commenting on the King's 
death, says — " Poor and mean folks ought to have little 
hope about this world, since so great a king suffered 
and toiled so much, and could not find one hour to push 
off his death, whatever diligence he knew to make " 
( Memoir es, VI., Chap. XIII.). And again he writes ( Ibid. 
VIII. , Chap. XIII. Note the ominous number of the 
chapter in both books) — "No creature is exempt from 



270 NOTES 

suffering, and all eat their bread in pain and grief. 
Our Lord promised it when he made mankind and has 
loyally kept it with all people. But pains and griefs 
are different ; those of the body are the least, and those 
of the understanding the greatest ; those of the wise are 
of one sort, those of fools of another. Yet too much 
grief and suffering afflicts the fool like the sage (though 
to many it seems the contrary), and he has less consola- 
tion. Poor people (who toil and plough, to feed them- 
selves and their children, and pay taxes and subsidies 
to their lords) ought to live in great discomfort, if great 
princes and lords had all the world's pleasures, and 
they toil and misery; but things go on quite otherwise." 

Page 173. — Speech and Silence. — The saying quoted 
by Carlyle is an old oriental one, though it has had 
many modern editions. Thus Schleiermacher says, in 
praise of a great scholar — " Bekker is silent in seven 
languages." 

Page 175.— Whitfield.— A favorable view of Whitfield 
is taken by Lord Mahon (Stanhope) in Chapter XIX. of 
his History of England. 

Page 177. — Steele. — Thackeray has, perhaps better 
than any other writer, said a good word for the neglect- 
ed Steele, whose fine panegyric on one woman well 
rivals the more famous quotations made from Petrarch 
or Dante on like subjects. We love Steele ; we praise, 
but seldom read Addison. 

Page 179. — Swift. — Carlyle refers here to the lines in 
Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes — 

"From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow, 
And Swift expires a driveller and a show." 



NOTES 271 

It is cruel to quote thein. The beauty and strength of 
Swift's unsurpassed prose are the product of a clear in- 
tellect and a genuine (if not always apparent) fineness 
of feeling, rarely found united in Englishmen. Swift is 
too honest not to show us his faults ; we therefore the 
more willingly pardon them. ^.4 Tale of a Tub demands 
his canonization by Anglicans, could they see how true 
and badly treated a friend they had in him. His Gulli- 
ver's Travels, the charmer of our childhood, the in- 
structor and arnuser of our later years, is simply (we 
speak advisedly) the best work of pure imagination ever 
put forth, after the Divine Comedy of Dante. The 
genius of Bunyan, in spite of his high theme, does not 
so impress us, with all his allegorical names and char- 
acters. But in reading Swift and Dante their perfect 
style is forgotten, because it is perfect ; we think only 
of the real things they describe and the characters who 
act again in our presence. We are not told that Ca- 
paneus .vages ; we hear him raging. We become Lili- 
putians ourselves when the Emperor of Liliput ap- 
pears. " He is taller, by almost the breadth of my 
nail, than any of his court, which aJone is enough to 
strike an awe into the beholders.'' Great is the power 
of words, in themselves the idlest things, when used by 
a master. 

Page 179. — Sterne. — Sterne (like Kabelais, whom in 
many respects he resembles less than critics pretend) 
is, in one word, indescribable. He should be read, not 
criticised. He has certainly some of the merits of Cer- 
vantes and Swift ; his humor is as exquisite, but very 
different and all his own. Coleridge, strange to say, 
has best commented on him (a Course of Lectures, IX., 
in Vol. II. of his Notes), Dr. Slop, Corporal Trim, the 
Widow Wadman, and Uncle Toby are quite as real to us 



272 NOTES 

as Don Quixote himself. The improprieties of Sterne 
are indeed provoking, but we pity those who see not 
the refinement which lies beside them. In subtlety 
of conception and expression the character of Mr. 
Shandy is worthy of Shakespeare. We praise many 
books more ; but there are few we would not part with 
for a comfortable fireside copy of the inimitable Tris- 
tram Shandy. 

Page 179. — Pope. — An affected contempt for Pope, 
whom they do not understand, is one of the symptoms 
common to a sickly class of modern essayists, who spin 
weak cobwebs about him from their own ailing moral 
interior. Byron knew better when he called Pope ' ' a 
poet of a thousand years." He is not to be spoken of 
in the same breath with the other poets of Queen 
Anne's contemptible reign. His Essay on Criticism re- 
mains a marvellous performance, though written in his 
twentieth year. Notwithstanding Hallam's pseudo-pla- 
tonic criticism {Literature of Europe, Chap. I.) Eloisa to 
Ahelard most touchingly expresses the feelings of one 
of the truest of women, while the immortal Dunciad 
asks in vain for a twin-brother, to stigmatize the obtru- 
sive pretenders to fame swarming in our nineteenth 
century. 

Page 182. — Johnson and Boswell. — The reader should 
again compare Carlyle's essay on Johnson with that of 
Macaulay, and note well the superiority of the former. 

The recent edition of Boswell by Dr. Hill treats this 
masterpiece of biography with unusual care and sym- 
pathy. 

Page 182. — Hume. — Hume (against all differences of 
opinion) ranks with Malebranche in France and Leibnitz 
in Germany as one of the few modern writers who, like 



NOTES 273 

Plato and Cicero among the ancients, knew how to 
make philosophy agreeable. See the edition of his 
works in four vols., by Green and Grose. 

Page 184. — Robertson. — Eobertson is the baby Carlyle 
flings to the wolves, that he may save the reputation 
of other Scotchmen whom he always pets. Even our 
James I. (his James VI.) won his admiration. 

Page 185. — Gibbon. — Gibbon, the only Englishman 
who has united German learning with French grace, is 
less understood by Carlyle than by many of the ortho- 
dox, admirers of the finely tempered weapon that 
wounds them. Carlyle used more moderate language 
in talking to Emerson. " Gibbon he called the splendid 
bridge from the old world to the new." He is still the 
only general historian for the whole period of the Mid- 
dle Ages. Unfortunately the latest and best annotated 
edition of his Decline has penuriously been printed on 
very poor paper. 

LECTUEE XI. 

Page 187. — Inadequacy of Logic. — What Carlyle here 
states resembles, more closely perhaps than he might 
have wished, the opinions set forth on the same subject 
by Cardinal Newman, with all his characteristic charm 
of expression (see An Essay in Aid of the Grammar of 
Assent). 

Page 193. — Werter and Charlotte on Tea-ciqjs. — In the 
poem expressive of gratitude to his kind friend and 
patron the Duke of Weimar, among his Roman elegies, 
Goethe thus wrote — 

11 Yet what avails it me. that indeed the Chinese, too, 
Painted, with careful hand, Werter and Lotte on glass. " 
18 



274 NOTES 

This translation is literal. But see the whole poem, 
with much else that is enjoyable, in Mrs. Austin's Char- 
acteristics of Goethe, 3 vols., London, 1833. 

Page 195. — The Works of Byron. — Byron never seri- 
ously said that the world was a place not worthy for 
generous men to live in. He says quite the contrary. 
Upbraiding the degenerate inhabitants of the beautiful 
land of Greece, before it regained its freedom, he refers 
to the time " when man was worthy of thy clime." In 
the same poem (see the delicious verses at the beginning 
of The Giaour) he often expresses the same sentiment. 
For example — 

" Strange — that where Nature loved to trace, • 

As if for Gods, a dwelling'place, 
And every charm and grace hath mix'd 
Within the paradise she fix'd, 
There man, enamour'd of distress, 
Should mar it into wilderness." 

And again — 

" So soft the scene, so form'd for joy, 
So curst the tyrants that destroy." 

The burning stanzas of his inspiriting Isles of Greece ex- 
quisitely display the same conviction. 

Page 196. — Goetz von Berlichingen. — Sir Walter Scott 
translated, not well, this poem, in which the characters 
are thoroughly alive, and which Goethe wrote as a young 
man beginning to show his strength, and anxious for a 
while to save his mind from the oppression caused by 
the symptoms of weakness he saw around him. Goetz 
is the pendant to Werter. It expresses the mediaeval 
spirit, as against the modern. Goetz struggles to the 
last; Werter is worn out. The truth is that Goethe, 



NOTES 275 

writing these poeins out of his heart, in quick succes- 
sion, split his own complex being into two characters, 
the man of contemplation and the man of action. In 
Faust this double theme is again taken up on a much 
greater scale, both as to extent and intricacy, and with 
far more refined mental resources. 

Those who neglect Werters Leiden, fearing it should 
prove too melancholy, are deceived. It contains not a 
few bright thoughts and many charming descriptions of 
external nature. 

Page 200. — The Diamond Necklace. — The reader will, 
doubtless, turn to Carlyle's paper on this matter (re- 
printed in his Miscellanies), and to the well-known ro- 
mance of Alexandre Dumas (Le collier de la reine). The 
English " Baccarat scandal " of 1891 might, like the affair 
of the Diamond Necklace (which it more resembles than 
at first appears), have caused mischief, had attendant 
circumstances aided. It, too, was a spark, which by 
good luck did not fall upon gunpowder. 

Page 200. — Rousseau. — For an instructive and very 
pleasantly written lecture on Rousseau, which many of 
our readers have probably not seen, we cite the title of 
Emil Du Bois-Reymond's "Friedrich II. trod Jean- 
Jacques Rousseau," in his Reden, erste Folge, Leipzig, 
1886. 

As Rousseau, like Don Quixote (see the English 
translation of Griesinger's Mental Diseases, p. 10), with 
all his exquisite genius, reminds us of those who belong 
to the so-called borderland between sanity and insanity, 
we may refer also to J- J. Rousseau's Kran~kheit*geschichte 
von P. J. Mobius, Leipzig, 1889. See, likewise, the 
somewhat rare Expose succinct de la contestation qui 
s'est e"leve*e entre M. Hume et M. Rousseau, avec les 
pieces justificatives (a Londres, 176G), and Mr. John 



276 notes 

Morley's welcome Life of this eminent French writer. 
Diseased nerves, in spite of Carlyle's protest, sometimes 
offer the only true explanation of the strange conduct of 
great men. 

Page 201. — The French Revolution. — For a calm and 
hopeful discussion, written with much eloquence, of the 
ideas suggested by a study of the three French revolu- 
lutions (1789-1830-1848) every reader should think over 
Ernest Eenan's VAvenir de la Science : Pensees de 1848. 
Paris, 1890. 

Page 203. — Europe and France. — Carlyle is not con- 
sistent in asserting the right of Europe against France, 
while he commends Napoleon's maxim of " the career 
open to talents." The English and the Germans threat- 
ened France in the first instance, and caused a misery 
more widespread than that of the French Revolution it- 
self, by their vicious intromission in the affairs of a peo- 
ple with which they had no concern. The two Teutonic 
nations, in fact if not in right, were consistent enough. 
Whatever they might say, they showed by their actions 
they preferred to freedom that slavery to oligarchical 
governments it was the chief business of the French 
Revolution to put down. These things began before 
Buonaparte. It is wrong to look on him as an upset- 
ter of the principles of the Revolution. He indeed 
saved France from anarchy, restored religion, and raised 
that nation to a height of power it never reached before 
or since. But was he not a promulgator from the can- 
non's mouth of the great revolutionary maxim Carlyle so 
much admires ? And was it not their terror lest Europe 
in general should find this maxim too captivating, that 
made its rulers send their misguided hosts against the 
preacher of a doctrine which, once taught, meant the 
destruction of all oligarchy ? 



NOTES 277 

Napoleon said, that John Bull in the end would do 
him justice. Has not the chief recorder (Gen. Sir W. 
Napier) of Wellington's victories emphatically asserted 
the incomparable superiority of his Corsican opponent ? 
Did not our Queen appear in public leaning on the arm 
of the nephew of her grandfather's enemy, and has 
not the son of the same nephew since died in her ser- 
vice? 

LECTURE XII. 

Page 207. — Return to Nature. — This is precisely the 
advice of the leading interlocutor in Galilei's Dialogo, 
published in 1632 (not 1630 as stated by Whewell, 
whose account, in his Inductive Sciences, of this first of 
modern philosophers is very far from being the best). 
Besides Mach's chapter on Galilei, already recommended 
(under p. 103), see Poggendorffs Gescltichte der Physik, 
Leipzig, 1879, pp. 204-245, and Heller's Gescltichte der 
Physik, Stuttgart, 1882, I. Band, pp. 343-383. Also, 
the German translation of part of Galilei's Discomi 
(1638), forming No. 11 of Ostwald's Klassiker der exacten 
Wissenschaften, Leipzig, 1890. Galilei may be called 
the Homer, while Newton is the Shakespeare of dynam- 
ics. Huyghens (the " Summus Hugenius " of our 
Newton, a man not prone to distribute praise) is its 
Sophocles. The merits of Huyghens are well set forth 
not only by Mach, but also by Diihring in his very 
original Kritische Geschichie der Mechanik, 3 ed. Leipzig, 
1887. 

Page 208.— The Phcenix — What Carlyle says of the 
end or consummation of scepticism will be consoling to 
many, but it is not the view of theologians and logi- 
cians, for whom he never cared. The Rev. Dr. Mo- 
merie, who belongs to both these classes (a union some- 



278 NOTES 

what rare), tells us that those who still cling to their 
early faith "are every now and then pained, embarassed, 
staggered, by the fact that so many of their intellectual 
superiors consider their faith to be absurd. The spirit 
of agnosticism is in the air. The reviews are full of it. 
Popular lecturers are everywhere insisting upon it. We 
meet it in novels, and even in poetry. At the universi- 
ties it is the predominant creed among the undergradu- 
ates and the younger dons. And, worst of all, we hear 
it sometimes in drawing-rooms from women's lips — from 
women, strange to say, who are young and fair, who are, 
or should be, happy " (Agnosticism, 3 ed. revised, 1889). 
We all wish, like the Phoenix, to rise again from our 
ashes, but it is not quite so pleasant to be reminded that 
ashes must again and again be our doom. This series 
of transvolutions, which Carlyle promises us, savors 
rather of Indian than Christian belief. In his too em- 
phatic declaration of our ignorance (p. 188), in itself 
sufficiently real, he goes beyond poor Ophelia (Hamlet, 
Act IV. , Scene V.) in her frenzy, — "Lord, we know 
what we are, but we know not what we may be." 

We would point out the frequent error of using "scep- 
tic " as a synonym for the words "agnostic" or "infidel." 
Sceptics are extremely rare. We hardly know of any 
beside Montaigne, Bayle, Hume (perhaps Gibbon and 
Mill, father and son), with Fontenelle — all delightful 
writers. Pascal, that matchless writer, had also his 
sceptical side. He is finely discriminated by Paul Bour- 
get as the only apologist for orthodoxy who ever under- 
stood doubters. Most defenders of Christianity, laud- 
ably desiring to slay the errors of their opponents, dis- 
charge their missiles at everything except the mark. 
They failed by not discovering the sources of conviction 
and its opposites. They hit the ambient air. Archbishop 
Whately and Cardinal Newman have indicated some of 



NOTES 279 

these faults of method, but they themselves in practice 
have likewise failed. Of living eminent writers we may 
name as sceptics the fervid Kenan and the acute Du 
Bois-Keymond. Among those lately deceased we might 
also designate as sceptical, in the best and truest sense, 
one of the choicest geniuses of our time, a discoverer 
comparable to Newton, the pious Gustav Theodor 
Fechner. Carlyle, without knowing it, was himself a 
sceptic. 

Page 212. — Happiness. — Carlyle, as so many know, has 
expressed noble thoughts on the signification of happi- 
ness in the most remarkable chapter of his Sartor 
Resartus (Book II., Chap. IX.). His friend, John Stuart 
Mill, referring to these views, has modified them from 
his own experience (Autobiography, pp. 132-143). His 
theory, strange as this may sound, is very like the only 
true and pious one ; it is, in fact, a moonlight reflection 
of it. We may, in our ingratitude, reject the happiness 
offered to us ; but happiness is not to be snatched by our 
own efforts. It comes to us like genius, beauty (Iliadis, 
III., 65), or sleep (Psalm, cxxviii. 2). It is a gift from 
on high. 

Page 213. — German Metaphysicians. — We fully admit 
the inherent difficulties of metaphysics, and the further 
difficulties superinduced by many painstaking German 
writers and others ; but Carlyle's views of both defy our 
powers of annotation. They are more incomprehensible 
than metaphysics themselves. 

The best modern works on philosophy are unquestion- 
ably the very original and critical writings of Wundt, 
namely, his Psychologie, Loyik, Ethik, System tier Philos- 
ophie, and Studien, which last is a most useful periodi- 
cal by himself and others on all topics appertaining to 
things of the mind. These books we have bought and 



280 NOTES 

read (let others do likewise). They could not, their 
dates being considered, have come within Carlyle's cog- 
nizance. A little more patience in dealing with such 
subjects would have done our Lecturer no harm. Meta- 
physics were certainly not Carlyle's forte, though he has 
strangely been cited as a promulgator of idealism. He 
errs in blaming metaphysic for failing to supply that 
which (like a custom-house) it can never afford. 

Page 216. — Goethe. — Carlyle has said so much that is 
good about Goethe, that no one who possesses his works 
needs the particular references which are here omitted. 
He is at his best whenever he treats of him. Between 
Goethe and Englishmen he still remains the one indis- 
pensable medium. 

Page 217. — Westostlicher Divan. — See Simrock's edi- 
tion (Heilbronn, 1875) of this incomparable work, with 
its references to the original eastern sources from which 
Goethe drew. Also consult an interesting article 
(" Goethe und Suleika ") in Julian Schmidt's Bilder aus 
dem geistigen Leben, Leipzig, 1870. 

Page 218. — Schiller. — The cheap edition of Carlyle's 
Life of Schiller, published in 1873, has a supplement on 
Schiller's parents and sisters. This is chiefly made up 
of translations from the works of Saupe and others. It 
is well worth reading, and it touchingly depicts (to use 
Carlyle's words) " an unconsciously noble scene of 
Poverty made richer than any California." 

Page 221. — Wilhehn Tell. — Wilhelm Tell (though 
prostituted as a school-book) is, next to Faust, the no- 
blest tragedy which has appeared since the times of 
Shakespeare. The third scene of the fourth act, where 
Tell struggles with his feelings before slaying the 



NOTES 281 

tyrant, is unsurpassed for tone pathos and rugged 
strength of expression. Carlyle has given a translation 
of this scene in his Life of Schiller. 

Page 221. — Bidder. — Jean Paul, unlike Goethe and 
Schiller, has not been fully translated for English read- 
ers. Carlyle himself has left us renderings of two of 
his stories, chosen by him as thoroughly representative. 
Two other translations are in Bonn's Libraries— Levana, 
a work on education, and the romantic tale entitled 
Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces. 

Page 225. — Leave-taking. — Carlyle has been often 
compared, sotto voce and expressly, to each of the three 
German authors he most loved, and whose works he in- 
troduced by his useful labors to so many English read- 
ers. He has thus in turn been likened to Goethe, Schil- 
ler, and Richter. He is furthest from Goethe, whom 
he most venerated, to whom his obligations were great- 
est, and with whom, alone of the three, he entered into 
personal communion. Goethe, with much of Carlyle's 
conscientiousness and force, possessed in a large meas- 
ure those very qualities wherein Carlyle was weakest ; 
for who does not allow Goethe's calm, his fairness, his 
fine appreciation of all that is essential and beautiful in 
form. He is accordingly by French admirers and by 
his own countrymen placed far above his great English 
interpreter, as a man in every way wider and pro- 
founder. Certainly he is more harmonious ; he was 
guided by the key-note of artistic forbearance (the 
liT)hev ayav of the Greeks — the ne quid nimis of their 
Latin imitators) with a nicety to which Carlyle could 
never adjust his own compositions. He at no time 
made any such pretensions. It were useless, therefore, 
to pursue this comparison further. 

Yet surely Carlyle deserves praise for perceiving, as 



282 NOTES 

he did, the distinctive excellence of Goethe. This vir- 
tue is enhanced when we reflect on the differences be- 
tween those two writers. To revere what we lack our- 
selves is the genuine nucleus of piety. We find good 
in the humblest man when he admires the teacher who 
shows him a little part of the road to the infinite. 
There were strong ties of attraction between Carlyle 
and Goethe. How else could Carlyle have translated 
so beautifully the charming verses in Wilhelm Meister ? 
Through these versions he shines as a true poet, and 
not a mere satellite, fitted only to reflect the light of 
the sun of Weimar. 

Goethe sincerely esteemed Carlyle's Life of Schiller, 
who is not wholly unlike his biographer. Carlyle sur- 
passed Schiller in the important gift of humor and in 
dogged industry. In other respects Schiller appears 
his equal or superior. Both were historians. Carlyle 
was more copious, more descriptive, more vehement ; 
in quiet strength, in smoothness, in love of liberty, in 
his firmer and more psychological grasp of the ruling 
ideas which persist from age to age, the author of The 
Thirty-years' War transcends the sturdy chronicler of 
the great Frederick, the eloquent but too precipitate 
commentator on France in her good and evil efforts to 
obtain freedom. Fine was the dramatic genius of Car- 
lyle, but he diffused what it revealed to him through 
the general body of his writings. He never so concen- 
trated his powers as to rival those lofty works, worthy 
of their heroes, Wilhelm Tell and Wallenstein. 

Carlyle comes much closer to Eichter, howsoever di- 
verse their gifts and products. To call the latter a 
writer inferior to Goethe or Schiller is at once true, ob- 
vious, unnecessary, meaningless, and invidious. Eich- 
ter would have shrunk, with real modesty, from the 
comparison. He has his own excellences ; like every 



NOTES 283 

noteworthy man of genius lie is, in a certain sense, in- 
comparable. The German, like the English Jean Paul 
(for so is Carlyle often' termed), has been well styled 
the unique, der einzige, the only one. Kichter resem- 
bles Carlyle in his mixture of defects and merits. 
Both play tricks with language, alternately losing and 
gaining by risking extraordinary expressions. Both 
indulge, like St. Paul, in numerous anacolutha. The 
humor of both is strong, and not always restrained ; it 
highly pleases, it sometimes shocks us. They agree 
most in the spirit animating their works, their love of 
innate heroism struggling against outward hindrances, 
their confidence in the ultimate victory of truth and 
providence, their hopes for man and their faith in his 
future. Both were hard workers and high thinkers : 
none could be more unlike Dante's " scianrati die max 
nonfur vivi" Kichter and Carlyle were thoroughly in- 
stinct with life and with that which is better than life — 
immortality. That is why they have left such good 
things behind them. Now they rest from their labors, 
and their works will follow them. Each might have 
felt, like Goethe, — 

"Es kann die Spur von meinen Erdentngen 
Nicht in Aeonen untergehn : " 

and have said with Schiller, — 

" Getrostet konnen wir zu Grabe steigen : 
Es lebt nach uns ;— durch andre Krafte will 
Das Herrliche der Menschheit sich erhalten." 



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